


Beacon

by LokiofEarth



Series: Beacon [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Action, Angst, Basically a rewrite with an OC inserted in, But it could be interesting, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, This is a mess I'm so sorry, Tony Stark tries to be a parent, kinda canon?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-07-12 03:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19939522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokiofEarth/pseuds/LokiofEarth
Summary: Harper Eddins was normal, well, until she wasn't. And then she met The Avengers and everything changed.





	1. 1

It's approximately 6:23pm when she gets home from her regularly scheduled run. She doesn't particularly like doing it, nor does she see much of a need for it, but her parents are insistent on her doing it daily.

You'd think being homeschooled would get you out of taking part in physical education, but that's not the case for her.

She gets back only slightly later than usual, her keys clinking loudly against the metallic bowl that she deposits them in as she steps through the front door. The keys are still shiny and fresh, having only been cut about a month prior.

One of her thirteenth birthday gifts according to her parents. She probably would've preferred a new phone, but beggars can't be choosers.

"Mom, Dad! I'm home!" She calls. Nothing back. Just silence.

That's odd. She always gets a response, regardless of how simple it may be.

She moves for the living room, expecting to see at least one of them in there. Her Dad's the more likely suspect - he often sits in there when he has a moment, headphones on and a documentary of some kind playing on his tablet. She doesn't understand his fascination with the documentaries, but she doesn't call him out on it.

She had expected to see one of them. She doesn't.

She sees both of them, laying there, their eyes void of emotion. The pools of crimson red around them don't frighten her as much, but the visible gaping holes in the back of their heads do.

She stands there, paralysed, her eyes as wide as the holes. Oh, god, the backs of their heads.

It's the sound of several cocked guns that snaps her out of her suspended state of paralysis.

Her eyes, fogged, don't shift at all.

"Don't try anything. We know what you can do."

"I-I don't know what you're talking about." She stutters out. A lump rises in her throat and she forces herself to swallow it down, her eyes still focused on her parents...no, those aren't her parents.

Her eyes remain focused on the bodies in front of her. That's all they are now. Bodies.

"You're gonna come with us." A man, voice rough, says. It's an order, not a request.

She knows she has to get out of here, but she doesn't know if it'll work. It usually doesn't, well, at least when she's trying to get it to work. But right now she's scared and angry and distraught, and the last time she managed to get it to work she was positively terrified.

Still, correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation. 

"I'm not going anywhere with you." She bites back, her stutter gone. She hasn't turned to face them, but her eyes no longer lay on the bodies. She's seen enough of them. Far too much.

Nobody responds, but she doesn't even need to think about what they're doing behind her back. She needs to go, and she needs to go now.

She closes her eyes, her face scrunching up as she concentrates, and by some miracle it works, but not until after the first few gunshots are fired. 

It all goes dark, and then it's bright again. It's bright and loud and busy. Some people just brush right past her, phones clasped firmly in one hand and briefcases in the other. Some people gasp at the sight of her, but none of them reach out to her. Some stop and stare, their mouths agape, but she forgets about their prying eyes when the pain registers.

It's on her right side. Her shoulder, to be precise. Her shoulder drowns in crimson. Not as dark as theirs, but still dark and out of place and terrifying.

There's chatter around her, mumblings of ambulances and parents and blood. All things she doesn't want to face, things that she can't face.

She takes off in a run down the street, her left hand clutching her right shoulder tightly, ignoring the concerned few that call out to her as she leaves. 

She needs to get somewhere undercover, somewhere safe. 

She just doesn't know where that is.


	2. 2

There's no way around it - she looks awful. She looks awful; she feels awful and she knows that she's only getting worse. Despite her attempts to stench the outpouring of blood from her shoulder by fashioning a makeshift bandage from her jacket (her favourite that she had to tear to make such a supply, but that's not important), she knows that it's not a permanent solution.

She needs to get the bullet out before she can try and get it to heal. Blood loss is one thing to deal with, but infection is a whole other matter entirely. She could just leave it in there, but something tells her that something undesirable may have been laced with that bullet. Those people didn't exactly seem like the type to do something half-heartedly.

Everything feels amplified as she drags herself through the crowded streets, weakly barging past anybody in her way. Her heads spinning, she can feel nausea kicking in, and her surroundings aren't doing much to help that.

The exhaust fumes from passing cars smell purely intoxicating, and the nonsensical chatter of everyone around her is only setting her more on edge than she already is. She's fairly certain that she's in New York, and if that's the case then she's jumped much further than she ever has before.

She should feel proud of that, but all she feels is alarmed. She wasn't thinking about New York back at the house. She'd never even been to New York beforehand or thought twice about the place, so it's not like it could've accidentally come to her mind.

Here she was thinking that she was starting to gain control of it all. Turns out she couldn't have been more wrong.

She's still walking the streets as it starts to get dark, not that it changes much in her environment. If anything, it gets louder and more crowded as the sun continues to drop below the Manhattan skyline.

Or maybe its the Queens skyline, or the Brooklyn skyline, or the...that's all she really knows about New York, which is arguably ironic given the circumstances. You'd think that with her...abilities, skills (she doesn't really know what to call them), she'd know more about the place.

She begins to let her guard down when she enters a slightly less crowded area of the congested city, opting to keep to darker alleyways when she can to avoid detection. Only downside of that plan is that it's absolutely terrifying.

Being completely alone is frightening enough, but being completely alone in the dark just makes it a hundred times worse. It just makes you feel all the more defenseless and on edge.

She feels the full effects of that when the loud screeching of a metallic door being wrenched open echoes throughout the alleyway, light spilling out of it into the dark space as it opens.. She hastily takes cover behind a nearby trash disposal, wincing at both the putrid smell and the pain that shoots through her arm as her shoulder hits the brick wall of the building that the trash disposal's leant up against.

She hesitantly peaks her head around the side of the disposal, catching a glance of a single man throwing a trash bag onto a pile of multiple others. He's slim, pale and unsuspecting.

Harmless, really, but she's not taking any chances.

He heads back inside, taking the light with him, and it's only then that she lets out a breath that she hadn't even realised she was holding. It's laughable, really, that she hid from somebody like him, but she seems to be doing quite well at hiding at the minute.

"He's gone, you know? You don't have to keep hiding."

She's goes rigid. The voice is female, not like the last voice that addressed her, but that doesn't lessen her apprehension.

"Wh-what do you want?" She asks, voice shaking despite her attempts to stop it from doing so.

She gets a response immediately, the woman's voice the stark opposite of hers, "To talk to you, Harper."

"How...how do you know my name?" She stumbles over her words, less fearful and more curious. This woman knows her name, and that should alarm her, but she's more interested in finding out how she knows her.

Her mind's telling her that it can't be for a good reason, but her gut's hoping that it's something else.

"If we're going to keep having this conversation, I'd much rather that we have it face to face."

"What if I don't want to talk to you?" Harper asks, but there's no bite to her voice. It's a genuine question.

"I just thought that you might want some help. You know, with that shoulder of yours?"

That intrigues her more so than the mention of her name. Those people in her house, the ones that shot her, there's no way they could've known which bullet struck her and where before she left. Maybe if they had been smarter and coordinated their attack they could've, but they hardly seemed like the coordinated type to her. More so the 'shoot first, ask questions later' types.

Regardless, the mention of her shoulder does somehow convince her to listen to the woman's request. She tentatively creeps out from behind the disposal, her hand automatically reaching up to her poorly bandaged shoulder defensively.

She sees the woman, albeit barely in the shadowy alleyway in which they're stood. She's clad in all black, something that's making her even less distinguishable among the darkness. She looks to be in her early to mid thirties, her brown hair showing no signs of turning grey. Her face is unreadable, but that's mostly because of how dark it is.

"How long's that been bleeding for?" The mysterious woman asks with a nod to her wounded shoulder.

She shrugs back, something that she quickly regrets given the circumstances. She replies with a grimace, "A couple of hours."

"Why have you let it bleed for so long?"

"Wh-what do you mean? I don't...I don't know what you're talking about." Harper says, her stutter returning. She could just be asking out of curiosity, but her mind's instantly drawn to the worst case scenario - that she knows more than she should.

"Why haven't you healed it?"

And, there it is. Usually being overly negative just leads her to being wrong, but this time she was right in her suspicions. Usually it may be a close call between listening to her brain or her gut, but this time she can't ignore what her brain's telling her to do.

Get out. Get out right now.

"Listen, lady, I should probably go now. My, uh-my parents..." She says, her voice trailing off despite her attempts to remain calm and collected. She wanted to say that her parents are worried sick about her, but that's not possible. It's not possible and it never will be again.

The last time she saw them, they had gaping holes in the backs of their heads. That's the last image she has of them. No photos to reference. Memories? Sure. But she doesn't want to think about those. She's too frightened that she won't see them - that they'll be replaced with that final, haunting image.

"I-I need to go."

She turns away from the woman, the grip on her shoulder tightening slightly instinctively, and makes for the other end of the alleyway. She's foolish enough to think that it'd be that easy - after everything that's happened in the span of the last couple of hours, you'd think that she'd know better than that - but of course it's not.

She's forced to stop when two men, both dressed in suits identical in color to the woman's dress, approach from the direction she's heading in.

They stand before her rigidly and she stops hastily before she reaches them, turning back to the woman with a piercing glare, her voice now showing an emotion other than fear.

"What do you want?"

"We want you to come with us."

"I'm not going anywhere with you." Harper says, her eyes subtly scanning the nearby area for a getaway. She could attempt to jump, but she has no idea if that'll affect her arm in any way, nor does she know if it'll actually work. Today's shown her that she doesn't have as much control over it as she thought she did. She can't exactly run the risk of losing that control given the circumstances that she's in.

Besides, she doubts that she could even jump right now. She can't seem to focus her thoughts and she feels uncharacteristically tired. Before she thought that it might've been adrenalin, but now she's not so sure.

"Listen to me, Harper. You've lost a lot of blood, and-."

"Yeah?! Well, I don't need your help, okay?! I don't-!" She shouts, paranoia setting in, as she stumbles back weakly. She stops when the pain hits her suddenly, her shoulder burning in pure agony greater than it has before.

She wrenches her hand away from her shoulder, her pale hand drowning in a sea of crimson red that makes her eyes go wide and her breaths come out laboured and panicked. She knows what's happened, but that doesn't stop her fear as everything around her begins to go dark.


	3. 3

When she comes to, she feels surprisingly refreshed. The place she's in is naturally lit. No blinding lights, no pungent aroma of disinfectant. There is a beeping noise, though, and it's incredibly annoying and repetitive. The latter should reassure her - that means that it's stable - but after about five minutes of listening to it on repeat she's had enough.

She slowly attempts to sit up, shocked to find how easy it is despite her tiredness. Her hand reflexly comes up to her shoulder, images of red and sharp feelings of pure agony crossing her mind, but she finds nothing of the sort. Her T-Shirt's gone, a plain grey one there to replace it. She's fairly certain she knows what's happened, but she still pulls down the side of the shirt ever so slightly to confirm it, pure euphoric relief hitting her when she confirms it to be true.

Her shoulder looks as good as new.

She smiles to herself, but that smile soon falls as she looks around the unfamiliar room. It's relatively small, but it seems to connect to many rooms not unlike it in appearance. It's not a medical room - it's more like a laboratory if anything.

Harper jumps down from the table that she's been left on, flinching slightly when her bare feet cold, solid ground beneath her. Her other T-Shirt, torn beyond repair and stained with blood - her blood, sits just to the side of the table on a metal tray, the bullet that's more red than silver sitting beside it. That answers one of the questions that was on her mind, but it's made about five more pop up in its place.

She turns away, trying to push the horrifying images that are rushing through her mind away as she crosses over to the other side of the room. She glances out of one of the numerous tall windows that surround the room, trying to figure out where she is, but all she sees is more rooms and hallways below. The rooms all revolve around the centre, where staircases seem to be leading to even more rooms. She's not afraid of heights or anything, but she definitely wouldn't want to fall down there. She's high up enough that doing that wouldn't end well. It's like some kind of office building - a highly expensive, technologically advanced one at that.

Looking away from the window, she moves over to a desk at the side of the room, a document that's been left open on the computer catching her eye. At the top, in blocky, bold letters, reads a single name.

_HARPER EDDINS_

The document's about her, and although that doesn't necessarily give her the right to read it, she does anyway. Well, to be more precise, she chooses to skim read it, because with the amount of information on there, she'd have to stand around all day to get through it all.

_ADVANCED COGNITIVE FUNCTION...EARLY DEMONSTRATION OF ABILITIES...TELEPORTATION CONFIRMED...POSSIBLE MANIPULATION ABILITIES - EARLY SIGNS OF PHOTOKINETIC CONTROL...BULLET WOUND TO RIGHT SHOULDER, BULLET REMOVED, WOUND SELF MEDICATED..._

"What the hell is all of this?" She murmurs, and she can feel the panic overwhelming her the more that she reads. These people - whoever they are - know more about her than she does, and they've got it all detailed in one place.

"What are you doing?"

She jumps back from the computer like it's on fire and turns around rapidly, almost tripping over her own feet in the process. The woman from yesterday(?) - she doesn't even know what day it is - is stood at the door to the room, a tablet in hand. Harper knows that she should at least try to be calm, but her anger wins out before she gets the chance. After what she's just found, this woman has the nerve to be demanding answers from her.

"What did you do to me? Why do you have all of this information?" Harper asks, glaring.

"We helped you, Harper." She replies, "Now, if you'd follow me, there's-."

"No! No, I'm not going anywhere with you! I don't know who you are or how you know all of this, but I'm going home!" Harper yells back, any chance of her handling the situation calmly or respectfully gone. She walks towards the door, rage fuelling every step she takes, but the woman doesn't allow her to get too far, stepping in front of her before she can reach the exit.

"I can't let you to do that, Harper."

"It's a good thing that I don't need your permission, then." Harper replies, her sights set on the space just outside the room. She's apprehensive about doing it, but her anger and fear easily outweigh that apprehension.

She feels the world around her change, everything going dark for a split second before it's bright again. She goes to run, but then she finds that she's already moving. She's moving down; she's falling right down the central part of the building and she begins to scream when she realises that fact. She could try to jump again, but she can't even focus on attempting such a thing.

All she focus on is the ground and how it's getting closer by the second. She closes her eyes when it gets dangerously close, instinctively curling in on herself as if it might help her in any way. She waits for everything around her to stop, but the only thing that stops is herself.

"You can stop screaming, little person. I caught you."

The voice is foreign - British to be precise. She listens to the voice and stops screaming, something that she hadn't even realised she was still doing. In all fairness, she shouldn't even be alive right now. How is she even alive?

"Are you gonna open your eyes or are we gonna be stood here all day, kid?" Another voice asks, this one American.

She listens to the second voice just like she did the first, jumping to her feet the moment she does and backing up as soon as she possibly can. The one who caught her - tall, bearded, long blonde hair - looks confused. She recognises the two men at his side instantly, and it's then that she comes to a conclusion on just who they are.

"You're...you're The Avengers." She mumbles, her eyes shifting between them rapidly.

"And you're supposed to be up there." Tony Stark, _the_ Tony Stark, tells her with a nod to where she just fell from.

She tries to respond, but there's too much going on for her to really come up with something. Here she is, stood in front of _The Avengers_ after having just almost fallen to her death - well, technically not all of them. There's only three of them here, but that doesn't make the situation any less daunting. She likes to think that she can multi-task fairly well, but this is too much to deal with all at once.

"I went to the lab to collect her and I found her reading the file. She teleported when I stopped her from leaving." The woman from upstairs walks into the room and walks directly to them, extending the tablet out to Tony Stark when she reaches him.

He takes the tablet from her and glances down at it, presumably reading something off of it with a satisfied look on his face.

"Teleportation, huh? That's your thing?" He says, not taking his eyes off the tablet, "I'd hope not. You're not very good at it."

Did...did she just get insulted by Tony Stark?

"Yeah, well it's not exactly as easy as learning how to ride a bike or som-."

"Photokinetic control?" Tony cuts over her without a second thought, his eyes still fixed on the tablet.

"That's what Banner said. Apparently her hands started glowing during surgery." The woman tells him.

"Wait, what? My hands starting gl-?"

"So it still works even when you're unconscious?" Tony asks rhetorically, cutting her off for the second time whilst still not bothering to even look at her, "You're gonna need to work on that."

She looks to Thor and Captain America (that's something she never thought would happen) desperately, but the latter's looking over Tony's shoulder at the information on the tablet, whilst Thor just looks confused.

"She also seems to display some healing capabilities, but-."

"But they're even less successful than the teleportation."

Harper stands there, listening to them talk about her like she's not even there, and it's not long before she's had enough of it. She notices the door on the other side of the room and, deciding that she doesn't want to keep listening to this, walks right past them and heads for it.

"Hey, kid!" Captain America calls, "Where are you going?"

"Anywhere but here." She replies without looking back. She reaches the door, having every intention to walk right out of it without a second thought, but then two men walk in through it and block her path. They walk right past her and over to the others, Tony greeting them sarcastically as they approach.

"Nice of you two to join us."

"Better late than never." The taller man of the two says, unfazed by Tony's sarcastic remark.

"Now that we're all here, we can talk this through." Captain America says.

Harper shakes her head, "There's nothing to talk about. I'm leaving and none of you can stop me."

She doesn't get why they're so intent on keeping her here. She doesn't understand why they have all that information on her. She doesn't want to know how they know all of it. She doesn't understand why they think this is okay.

"That's not-."

"You know what, Cap? Let her go." Tony says, cutting over him with ease. Cutting people off seems to be common trait of his.

The others seem surprised by this. One of the men who arrived late, the shorter of the two with greying hair, goes as far as trying to tell him otherwise.

"Tony, we can't let her go. She has no control over-."

"She's smart. Let her decide what to do." Tony says nonchalantly, finally looking up from the tablet and directly at her. He doesn't look smug or concerned about what may happen, rather he looks interested.

At what exactly? That she doesn't know.

"Fine. I will." She replies curtly, pushing any other thoughts out of her mind and focusing only on leaving. That's what she's wanted to do all along. Leave. She turns away from them again and walks right out of the door just as she originally intended.

She gets about five steps away before she goes running back, cursing under her breath as she walks in and sees Tony Stark's smug and expecting face on full display.

"If you can tell me what's going on, I might consider staying." She says pointedly, "And that's a big 'if'."

"Thought you might."

* * *

"So my hands just starting glowing?"

"As we were extracting the bullet." Bruce, the man who she referred to previously as the 'one with the greying hair', nods.

It turns out that Bruce led the team of doctors that got the bullet out of her shoulder, and it was during that process that he noticed the odd glowing of her hands. That's apparently when he opted to perform a brain scan, which led to them discovering most of the information that was detailed in the document. She was out of it for a couple of days apparently, giving him sufficient time to perform such a scan.

Although, the results aren't supposedly conclusive, and they're gonna need to perform more tests to find out more. Harper's still not entirely sure if she wants to agree to that just yet.

She stops pacing around and sits down on the couch beside Clint, taking a moment to collect her thoughts after everything's she's heard. Captain A - Steve, she means - and Bruce watch her from the opposite couch. The woman - who she came to goes by Agent Hill - left a few minutes ago, leaving Tony with the tablet that he's using in a single chair to the side. Thor's pacing around somewhere, but he hasn't said much, and when he does he chooses to refer to her as 'little person' despite knowing her name.

"Yeah, well, they've never done that before. I mean, I only found out that I could teleport a few months ago. The healing thing only happened a couple of weeks ago." She explains with a glance down at her hands, finding it hard to process what Bruce has told her.

"What happened?" Clint asks.

"Ran into a tree and cut my head on the bark."

"I thought she was supposed to be smart." He says, looking to Tony with a smirk, clearly amused by her response.

"She is." Tony replies, turning to Bruce with mock accusation on his face, "Bruce, are you sure that you did those scans right?"

Harper narrows her eyes at them, but it's not in a mean-spirited way.

"That's hilarious. Has anyone ever told you guys that you could be comedians? It'd be a much safer occupation than this whole superhero thing you've got going. Besides, it was an accident." She says mockingly, much to their amusement.

"Well, that's a relief." Clint jokes.

"Right, well, are you guys just gonna sit around all day and insult me or is there a point to all of this?" Harper asks.

"We want to know what happened." Tony says, cutting right to the chase as soon as the humor of the moment dies out, "You show up out of nowhere - literally out of nowhere - in the middle of the city where hundreds of people saw you bleeding from a gunshot wound."

Harper shrugs, "In my defense, I wasn't exactly planning on ending up here."

"Where were you planning on going?" Steve asks.

"I don't know. I just had to get away. My parents, they were...those people came and they-." She tries to explain herself, but her voice wanders off and her head drops.

She closes her eyes and concentrates, desperate to forget about what she had to see. What she shouldn't have had to see. What she shouldn't have to talk about. What she shouldn't even have to think about.

Oh, god...the holes in the back of their heads.

"Allison and Jack Eddins were former members of S.H.I.E.L.D."

She looks up as Agent Hill enters the room, the mention of her parents names capturing her attention instantaneously.

"S.H.I.E.L.D? What's that?" She asks.

"It was a military counter-terrorism and intelligence agency."

"Was?" Harper looks around the group, "Why 'was'? Did something happen?"

No one answers her, but judging by the looks on their faces, she can tell that she's not in a position where it's okay to keep asking.

"Her parents were killed by who we suspect were HYDRA operatives."

And there it is again. Not just the image of them lying there this time, but the pure terror she felt as well. It's just as vivid as it was when it happened, and it just keeps flooding her mind despite her attempts to stop it from doing so.

She just wants to forget. She just wants things to go back to normal.

"Why?" Steve asks.

It's a valid question, and although she doesn't have an exact answer, she has a hunch. A hunch that, she quickly realises, is almost as horrifying to face as what actually happened.

"They were after me. They wanted me to go with them so I left. I-It's...it's all my fault." She murmurs, that last part replaying like a broken record in her head.

_It's my fault. It's all my fault. I caused this. It's my fault._

It's more painful than the gunshot wound was. For her, it's more painful than the image of them lying there, and that itself was worse than that damn bullet getting lodged in her shoulder.

A hand rests on her shoulder, a voice gently prompting her to look up. She does, her clouded eyes making contact with the sympathetic ones of Steve Rogers, who's clearly trying his best to offer her some form or reassurance or comfort.

"None of this is your fault, Harper."

She shakes her head, her throat clenching painfully, and casts her eyes back down to her feet, that same mantra still going on repeat in her head even as she chokes out a reply.

"What...what am I supposed to do?"

She sounds so helpless that it's almost pitiful, but there's point in pretending to be something that she's not. She's alone in a world where people are willing to kill her own family - just to get to her. People that she doesn't understand nor can even begin to understand.

"Let us help you."

It's a simple offer, really, but given the circumstances of the last few days it takes her by surprise.

"You...you'd do that?" She asks, voice small and shocked, as she looks around at the group.

They look sympathetic, caring almost. Even Tony, who looks up from the tablet finally to face her.

"Why do you think we brought you here, kid? Although, if we're gonna do that, you've got to start actually using that brain of yours. It'd be a shame to waste it." He says, his words making her smile genuinely for the first time in days. She has a feeling that it might be more of an actual request than an attempt to cheer her up, but she'll take what she can get.

"Okay, then." Harper says, looking around the group with enthusiasm, Where do we start?"


	4. 4

Harper walks into the kitchen area of Stark Tower after having wandered around the building for a good ten minutes, relieved to have finally found the place she initially set out to find.

After she finished her conversation with the Avengers yesterday (she still finds that hard to believe), Mr Stark had Agent Hill lead her to a room on the private quarters section of the tower. Apparently her room's between the Black Widow's (who she still hasn't seen for some reason unknown to her) and Bruce's, not that she'd know that because she hasn't seen any of them since yesterday.

She rested relatively well, especially considering all of the things that she could've easily thought about all night instead of sleeping. When she woke up she found a note waiting for her along with a fresh change of clothes - clothes not unlike the ones she had been wearing before, which she preferred.

_Thought you might need these - TS_

She changed into the new clothes, thankful when she realised how comfortable they were, before deciding to head out of her room to go and find someone, only to find the floor empty already. When she realised that nobody was around, she decided that she might as well have some breakfast. She had some food last night before she went to bed, but it wasn't much.

She makes her way over to the kitchen cupboards to look for some food. In an ideal world, she'd find some Fruity Pebbles, but she's not sure if she'll find food like that here. Mr Stark doesn't seem like the kind of person to eat Fruity Pebbles.

"What are you looking for, small person?"

She visibly jumps at the sound of a deep voice behind her, turning towards the person with her hand clutched at her chest in fright.

"Thor! You scared me!" She sighs, calming herself down after her brief moment of panic, "I was looking for Fruity Pebbles. Do you know if Mr Stark has any?"

"Fruity Pebbles? What are these Fruity Pebbles?" He asks, bemused. 

Harper's eyes go wide in shock.

"You've never had Fruity Pebbles?"

"There's no food by that name in Asgard."

She doesn't know where or what Asgard is, but she does her best to reply regardless.

"Well, Asgard's missing out." She replies, turning back to the cupboards to continue her search. She searches all the cupboards beneath the countertop first, Thor watching her from across the room curiously, only to find everything but what she's looking for.

She closes up the last cupboard beneath the countertop and stands back up properly, glancing up and noticing that there's even more cupboards above her and just out of her reach.

"I don't think Stark will hav-."

"Maybe there's some up there." 

She ignores Thor, deciding to give the higher cupboards a search before giving up. She pulls herself up onto the countertop, albeit barely managing to keep her balance, and reaches for the cupboard doors as Thor walks past her with a chuckle.

"I wish you luck with that, little person." He says walking out of the kitchen.

Harper murmurs a goodbye to him as he passes, closing up another counter with a groan when she realises it's full of nothing but spices. She reaches for the next counter, expecting to find everything but what she's looking for once again.

What she hadn't expected was for multiple pots and pans to come tumbling out of the cupboard and crash right into her. She falls back from the force, landing in a heap on the kitchen floor with a loud thud. 

"Son of a-!" She groans as her back sears in pain, wincing as the pots roll off of her and rattle loudly on the ground right by her head.

Steve walks into the room and notices her on the floor, his face showing both amusement and concern.

"Looks like someone's having a good morning."

"I was looking for Fruity Pebbles. I think I might just have a banana or something." Harper says, as if it justifies why she's lying on the kitchen floor with an entire cupboard's full of pots and pans around her. 

"Good call."

"Has anyone seen the kid?" Tony walks into the room, first noticing Natasha before spotting Harper on the floor and stopping abruptly.

"Hey, Mr Stark. What's up?" Harper says with an awkward smile and a small wave, the latter of which she quickly regrets when she sees Tony's nonchalant expression.

"Are you gonna stay there all day or...?"

"Definitely not." She replies, hastily jumping up to try and at least appear somewhat serious. She feels like all hope of that happening dies when one of the pots rolls off her and hits Steve's foot; he looks unfazed by it, but Harper still murmurs an apology out of habit.

"Are you done, kid?"

"Yeah. Sorry, Mr Stark." She says apologetically, focusing her attention on him with enthusiasm, "So, what are we starting with? Cause I was thinking about why the whole teleportation thing's not been working and-."

"We're taking this at a rate someone like you can handle." He interjects.

"So...?"

"So: baby steps."

"Did you just-." Harper stammers, looking over at Steve - who looks mildly amused - with disbelief on her face, "Did he just call me a baby?"

Steve nods, "Sounds like it, kid."

"Start with those flashlights you call hands." Tony says, turning away and heading for the kitchen door.

"What? Now?"

"What did I tell you about using that brain of yours?" Tony calls back as he walks out of the room, leaving Harper alone with Steve.

"Is he always like that?" She asks.

Steve shakes his head with a light chuckle, making his way towards the door, "Come on, kid. Let's get started."

Harper stands there for a second, unsure of herself, before rushing out of the room to follow Steve. She catches up to him and follows him at a steady pace through the pristine hallways of the tower.

"Aren't there supposed to be six of you?" She asks as they reach a staircase leading up to the next level of the tower.

"What?"

"You guys. You know, The Avengers? Where's uh...the Black Widow? That's the one." She replies, hesitating slightly as she considers the name for a moment.

"Romanoff's on an assignment."

"What kind of assignment?" She asks. Steve doesn't answer her, leading her to quickly apologise, "Sorry...was I not supposed to ask that question?"

She keeps doing that - asking questions that she really has no right to knowing the answers to. In her defense, she's only being curious.

"It's okay, kid. I get it. You must have a lot of questions." He replies as they head up to the next floor, turning the corner to head down another hallway that looks just as identical as the last. It's no wonder that she got lost earlier on. 

"You have no idea." She mumbles, but he doesn't seem to hear her this time.

She continues to follow him through the building until the reach a large facility a few floors up. It seems to be some kind of training facility, the high ceilings and large space perfect to facilitate the incredible powers that all of The Avengers possess. She follows Steve to the centre of the room, where he pauses and turns to face her with a reassuring nod.

"Okay, let's get started."

* * *

It's approximately twenty minutes later when she's hanging from the ceiling of the facility, gripping onto the metal structure of the ceiling in pure terror as Steve calls up to her from below.

"Kid, you've got to calm down." He tells her.

She shakes her head, eyes clenched shut as her vice like grip on the metal tightens. She's not necessarily afraid of heights, but she's not exactly a fan of these situations that she somehow keeps managing to get herself caught up in.

"I-I'm calm." She says, though her voice suggests otherwise.

"Okay, that's good. Do you think you could teleport back down here?" Steve asks calmly. He's doing surprisingly well at remaining calm despite the situation, something that Harper could really learn from.

"No, no! Definitely not!" She yells. She doesn't want to try and teleport out of this one - it'll probably only make things worse.

"What part of 'baby steps' didn't you understand?" Tony reprimands as he walks into the room, clearly disgruntled.

"H-Hey, Mr Stark!" Harper stutters, opening her eyes for a brief second only to instantly regret it. She snaps them shut and tightens her grip even more, as if that was even possible.

"I thought I told you to work on the flashlight hands first."

"She did. The light came out of her hands and shot her up there." Steve explains it for her, not that she was in any rush to. 

"Well, at least we know they work." Tony mumbles under his breath. He looks back up to Harper with a frustrated sigh, "Okay, kid. Just let go a-."

"Let go?! Are you crazy?! I don't want to die!"

She can't believe that he wants her to let go. Letting go doesn't seem like it would be of any benefit to her. She fell less than 24 hours ago - she doesn't want to do it again anytime soon.

"Kid, you're not gonna di-."

"If I let go, I will fall and break my back and die!" 

She hears both of them sigh, one of them sounding far more exasperated than the other. Something tells her that it's Tony.

"Look, kid. You either let go or teleport down." Tony tells her, "Or hang there all day. You could do that as well, but you might get bored."

She knows that he's right, but it doesn't make her loosen her grip on the metal. She considers it for a moment before making a decision, albeit hesitantly.

"Okay...okay. I'll try...I'll try teleporting." She stutters.

She concentrates as best she can through her panic, visualising the solid ground beneath her as best as she can. She gets the image of it in her head, and it's not long before she feels the cold concrete beneath her and Tony and Steve are helping her to her feet.

"There you go. You're okay." Tony says as she looks around, still slightly bewildered, whilst he, in true Tony Stark fashion, looks the total opposite.

"It worked. I actually did something." She says, looking between the two of them with an enthusiastic smile.

She may have screwed up with her so called 'flashlight hands', but at least she did something right with her teleportation. In her eyes, that's progress.

"Okay, kid. Take a break."

"What? But I've only been going for like twenty minutes. And I was making progress. Wasn't I?" She protests Tony's request, turning to Steve for some form of support. Steve looks like he might say something, but it's clear that Tony's not gonna drop this.

"Yeah, well, take a break. Cap?" Tony says, turning to address Steve and motioning to the door. They head for it and Harper calls out to them as they leave.

"Hey! What am I supposed to do now?"

"As long as you don't break anything, do anything you want." Tony says, the door closing behind him as he leaves.

Harper smirks to herself. "Whatever I want, huh?" She murmurs with a glance down at her hands.

She poises herself, hands down at her side, and concentrates just as she did before, visualising the light coming out her hands. She feels her feet raise off the ground at a steady and controlled speed, a speed that remains constant until she's about ten feet in the air.

"It's working!" She cheers to herself, brandishing her hands in victory, which is a decision that she quickly regrets. The lack of balance sends her falling back down the ground, where she lands with a resounding thud as her body crashes to the floor.

She rolls onto her back and stares up at the white ceiling, her entire body throbbing in pain from the impact. "Yeah, I need a break." She groans.

She seems to have a knack for falling from high places at the minute.


	5. 5

Two weeks pass and she begins to settle into a routine. She finds her place among The Avengers - well, the one's that are there. She still hasn't met the Black Widow - she assumes that she's still on her assignment - but she's spent enough time with the others over the past couple of weeks to feel welcomed.

Thor still calls her 'little person' most of the time, but he's started to call her by her name more often now. A few days after her first morning in the Tower, she found two boxes of Fruity Pebbles in the cupboard, one of which had been opened. Something tells her that was his doing.

She hasn't seen Clint as much as the others. She did watch him practice shooting one morning and she was impressed, but she felt awkward once he caught her watching and ran out without another word. Clint seems stoic for the most part, but something tells Harper that there's more to him than that.

Sometimes she'll observe Bruce as he works in his lab. She doesn't interfere or anything, she just watches and tries to learn from him. He's mild-mannered and shy, but he's also analytical and kind and understanding of her. 

Steve's the most helpful when it comes to training her abilities. He's helped her the most with them since she's arrived. He encourages her when she gets it right and motivates her when she gets it wrong. It's a nice balance.

Tony constantly reminds her that she's a kid. She feels like she should take it as patronising, but she feels like (for the most part) he's not trying to be. She's come to learn that he's not easily impressed, because when she teleported to him from one end of the tower to the other, he simply told her to keep working on it. It wasn't rude, just nonchalant.

She's gotten much better at controlling her abilities. She still doesn't have much control of her healing capabilities - she can't make them work on command, but she's healed relatively quickly from the numerous bruises and cuts she's accidentally sustained over the last couple of weeks. Her teleportation has improved drastically, though she still has the occasional hiccup with it. Surprisingly, she's had the most success with her Photokinesis. The whole flight thing is still unreliable, but she's mastered the art of generating the light on command without injuring herself, and she's even moved on to working on what Tony refers to as 'Photokinetic Constructs', which to her is a good sign.

She's learnt her way around the Tower over the last two weeks, which is a good thing as it doesn't take her long to find The Avengers after supper, which none of them attended for whatever reason. She finds them up on the landing pad on the Party Deck level of the tower, the sun setting, where she finds Steve having what seems to be an important conversation with Agent Hill, whilst the others are loading into an aircraft waiting for them.

"There's a QuinJet ready for you. Are you sure that it's Romanoff?" Agent Hill tells Steve with a nod to the aircraft.

"According to J.A.R.V.IS, yes."

Hill nods, "The QuinJet's coordinates are already set for Sudan."

"Sudan? Who's going to Sudan?" Harper asks, approaching Hill as Steve heads towards the QuinJet.

"We are." Tony tells her, walking over to them,"It's grown-up stuff, kid. Don't worry about it."

"Well, is there anything I can do? Cause I've been working really hard, you know? I mean, the whole healing thing is still up in the air, but-."

She goes off on a tangent, the idea of helping The Avengers on a mission (at least that's what she presumes they're heading out for) appealing to her senses. After all, if she has these abilities, what's the harm in doing something useful with them?

Tony doesn't seem to have the same perspective as her. He cuts her off, turning to Agent Hill and cutting off her rambling.

"Can you deal with this?" He says, exasperated. He begins to walk off towards the jet, where the others are already waiting for him.

"Wait, Mr Stark I-."

"Baby steps, kid!" He calls without even looking back as he boards the jet, "Remember what we talked about!"

"Got it, Mr St-!" She calls back unconvincingly, but the door to the jet seals shut before she can even finish. It takes off, Harper flinching back as the wind from the turbines blows fiercely throughout the landing area, leaving her stood on the deck with Agent Hill.

"Why are they going to Sudan?"

Hill begins to head back inside and Harper trails after her. "For a mission that I need to go and provide tactical support for whilst you stay up here." She says, her eyes fixed on the tablet as they head back inside.

"But I want to help." Harper protests.

She genuinely feels like she could offer some assistance to the team. She's a fast learner - if these past couple of weeks have taught her anything, it's that - so she could probably catch onto what's happening relatively quickly. Tony would probably tell her that it's 'adult business', but Tony technically isn't here at the moment. In her eyes, that changes things.

"I could help you provide tactical support. I've been watching Mr Stark use his tech and I think I'm starting to pic-." She rambles, following Hill as she reaches the elevator and presses the button, turning back to her when it lights up.

"I think this might be a bit out of your depth, kid." Hill replies without so much as a glance. She steps into the elevator as it opens and presses a button on the console.

"Wait, Agent Hi-." She says, being cut off this time by the elevator doors sealing shut. She groans in frustration, quickly realising the futility of even attempting to go after Agent Hill. She has a feeling that she won't get very far with that with her. If it were Bruce or maybe even Steve she might get away with it, but not with Hill.

She strolls back into the main area of the Party Deck, surprised to find how large it actually is. She hasn't really been up here before - the living quarters and the training areas are all on lower levels of the Tower, so she hasn't really had much of a need to come up here just yet.

The Deck has a comfortable sitting area with furniture that perfectly compliments the aesthetic of the room - muted and respectable. There's a pool table to the side of the room that seems to be permanently set up for a new game, though it doesn't look like any have been played for quite a while.

She walks over to the bar at the side of the room, noting the expensive glasses and alcohol bottles on display. She walks around to the other side of the counter with the simple intention of getting a closer look at what's on display when metallic shutters slam down in front of the displays, causing her to jump back in fright.

"What the-?!"

"Harper, I'm afraid I cannot allow you near Mr Stark's alcoholic beverages." J.A.R.V.I.S' robotic voice sounds throughout the floor, the sudden sound of which makes Harper jump again.

She hasn't interacted much with J.A.R.V.I.S since her arrival. She's aware of the AI's presence in the tower but not much else. Besides, what exactly could she talk to him...it about. Is J.A.R.V.I.S a he? She's not entirely sure.

"I wasn't gonna take anything!" She protests. For an outsider looking in, she bets that she must look insane, yelling in a room all by herself. 

Well, technically she's not by herself, but not everybody would know that.

"I am only following the monitoring protocol designed by Mr Stark. There is no need to become hostile." He replies calmly, confusing Harper.

"The what protocol?"

"Mr Stark requested that I monitor you in his absence."

"Of course he did." She sighs. In hindsight, she should've seen that one coming. Then again, most people would hire a babysitter instead of programming a computer system to do it instead.

"At least he didn't call it the 'baby monitor protocol' or something."

She could've sworn that she mumbled lowly under her breath, so she's surprised when J.A.R.V.I.S responds to what she says.

"Shall I suggest that to Mr Stark?"

"What? No!" She shouts, shaking her head profusely, "Please don't do that!"

"As you wish, Harper."

She sighs in relief. She's certain that if Tony hears about that, he'll make it into a reality within a matter of hours. It's a whole new level of patronising.

She heads back over to the sitting area, ditching her attempts to look around the bar (even if she was only doing so out of curiosity). She sits down on one of the grey couches with a content hum, relaxing into the soft cushions of the chair.

She wakes up about three hours later, well rested after a short nap she hadn't even intended on having, and she's only sitting there for about five minutes after she wakes up before she's positively dying on boredom.

She could easily go and train - her abilities could still use a lot of work, after all - but she's already done more than enough training for the day, and the idea of doing more doesn't really appeal to her.

She could go and relax in her room, which has progressively become more her own the longer she's been here. Within a few days, all of the space in her wardrobe became occupied, as were the bookshelves mounted on the side of the walls. One afternoon during her first week, in which she trudged back into her room exhausted from a few hours of training, she found a flat-screen television mounted on the wall opposite her bed. It's got mostly news channels, but those can be surprisingly entertaining at times.

Still, she's not particularly interested in watching the news right now, so she opts for the next best thing to keep herself occupied.

"J.A.R.V.I.S, you run this place, right?"

"I aid Mr Stark in running Stark Industries, yes." His robotic voice replies after a few moments.

"What else do you do?" She asks out of curiosity. She's assumed beforehand that J.A.R.V.I.S has some involvement in Tony's company - he is a computer program, after all - but she doesn't have a clue about what else he does. Using a computer program as advanced as J.A.R.V.I.S just to run a company doesn't seem like a very 'Tony Stark' thing to do.

"I control the security measures for the Tower." He explains.

Harper sits up, her interest piqued. "Security measures? Like what?"

"Incoming hostiles from the buildings left side."

"Oh, so you monitor the building for thr-." Harper replies, making the false assumption that he's simply giving an example of what he does. She's proven wrong when thousands of shards of glass shatter across the deck, the splinters firing everywhere in the process. She hastily ducks behind the couch, shielding herself from the bladed shards as the hostiles in question bombard the building.

They rush in, brandishing weapons. There's at least fifteen of them, maybe more, but Harper decides that she's not gonna stick around long enough to find out. She jolts up, her eyes fixed on the upper level of the deck, before jumping to a spot that puts a bit of distance between herself and the attackers.

"J.A.R.V.I.S!" She shouts, mind frenzied as she watches them rush up the stairs after her, slowly backing away the closer they get, "It'd be great if you'd use those security measures you were telling me about!"

"I have already contacted Mr Stark. Shall I deploy the Iron Legion?" He replies, the masked attackers now on the upper deck with her.

She opts to teleport away again but she's forced to stop abruptly when one of them lunges towards her with some kind of metallic rod. She narrowly dodges it, but it's not long before another of them lunges for her with the exact same weapon that she doesn't manage to dodge like the last. The rod strikes her in the side and she convulses as electricity shoots through her; she stumbles back, incapacitated, somehow managing to teleport back down to where she was with much of a struggle.

"J.A.R.V.I.S!" She shouts, voice frantic.

"I am preparing the Iron Legion."

She doesn't respond to him, instead focused on the attackers as they rush back towards her again, relentless in their assault. She notices that they're all holding the exact same weapon, that taser rod she was struck with before. She knows that if she keeps getting struck with them she'll be in serious trouble.

She's gonna have to fight back.

The first of them approaches, weapon raised and ready to strike. She focuses on the rod and concentrates the light in her hands, bringing them together to form a rod of light identical in appearance to the weapon of their attacker. He goes to hit her but she outspeeds him, striking him directly in the chest with her own weapon. The impact sends him crashing backwards towards the other approaching attackers, his incapacitated body knocking over another man in the process.

Two down, like fifteen to go.

Two men rush towards her this time, one coming from her left and the other from her right. The one on her left reaches her first and she strikes him back before he can even raise his weapon. She teleports behind the second and hits him in the neck, his body crumpling down to the ground as he groans in pain.

She fights them back to the best of her ability. Striking, then teleporting. Strike. Teleport. Strike. Teleport. It works for a while until it doesn't anymore. She's struck in the leg, and when she attempts to teleport she feels the wind get knocked out of her as she's struck in the stomach.

She crashes down to the ground, gasping for air inaudibly as she feels every muscle in her body tense, electricity coursing through her entire body. She could handle being struck once, but she can't handle all of this at once.

She registers the fact that the electricity's stopped, but she doesn't respond. She's still rigid, still gasping for her even as they back away and leave her there. Her vision's blurred but she can still see two figures move into her line of sight, hovering above her.

She can hear them talking over the ringing noise in her ears. They're speaking a foreign dialect that she knows how to translate.

German.

"We don't need her. We have stronger." 

The other figure sounds surprised, "What? But we have her now. We can take her n-."

"We wanted her because we thought she was stronger than what we had. She's weak. We don't need her."

She listens, muscles stiff from both the attack and fear. She hears the clicking of a gun - a sound that she shouldn't be familiar with - and feels her fear intensify.

But then she hears the sound of shots being fired from the other side of the room and the screams of multiple men. The figures are knocked away, one by a shield and the other by a hammer and then she's being helped to her feet, held up only by the arms of the person helping her up.

She's aware that she's being pulled out of the room by someone, and her initial instinct is to fight back. Even with the pain slowly ebbing away and her senses coming back to her, the strength to fight back just isn't quite in her.

Her back hits the wall and she slides down to the cool tiled floor, the full effects of the fatigue combatted by the adrenaline that's beginning to come back to her. A hand touches her arm and she flinches, less from pain and more from apprehension. 

The hand is quickly withdrawn but they don't leave, only briefly glancing behind their shoulder for any oncoming attacks.

"Bruce?"

He's wearing different clothes to the ones he wore when he left and he looks slightly disheveled, but she's still relieved to see him.

"Hey there, Harper." He says, voice shaking, as he turns back to her. He's apprehensive, constantly glancing over his shoulder as more gunshots and screams sound throughout the deck. Even being outside the room, the sound is still incredibly loud.

Harper moves to stand up and he turns back to her with a frown, "W-whoa! What are you doing?"

"I'm gonna go help!" She replies, shouting over the noise, "I feel fine!"

That's a lie, and he knows it.

"No you're not! We're staying here!"

"Bruce, I-!"

The deck falls uncharacteristically quiet all of a sudden and they both freeze, looking at each other as they sit there in a tense silence. She gets up from the ground, shrugging Bruce off when he tries to stop her, and turns towards the door with a defensive stance. Her legs are still wobbly, and she's certain that won't be able to put up much of a fight, but that's not gonna stop her from trying.

Still, it is a relief when a woman with short red hair walks through the door instead of one of the attackers, a flash of recognition in her eyes at the sight of Bruce.

"They're in here!" She calls back inside the room. Harper puts two and two together within moments (even in her dazed state) and figures out who she is.

Clint enters first, sheathing an arrow that's been lodged when he finds there to be no threat. Thor and Steve follow, the former looking furious whilst the latter looks more complacent and calm. Thor approaches her, catching her off guard when he places a strong hand on her shoulder, the other wielding Mjlnor in a vice-like grip. 

"Are you okay, little person?" He asks, tone serious.

"Y-yeah...I'm okay, Thor. Thank you." She replies, still dazed.

He nods, still looking slightly unconvinced, and he gives her a reassuring pat on the shoulder before stepping back, clearly not sure what else to do with himself. She appreciates his concern, even if he's quite awkward about it.

Tony walks in last, Iron Man suit equipped, and Harper can't help but feel an undeniable sense of panic when she sees his unreadable face. He sees her and sighs, his expression still unreadable.

"Am I in trouble?"

* * *

Harper sits down on the couch beside Thor and Natasha with a soft groan, the former looking at her with concern as she winces. She gives him a quick reassuring smile before turning to Tony, who walks back into the room after having a conversation with Agent Hill just outside. Apparently she couldn't access the surveillance footage for the Party Deck down in the Headquarters, something that she didn't notice until it was too late, having been too preoccupied with the Avengers mission. Whoever attacked her clearly thought their plan through. They managed to disable the surveillance footage for long enough to carry out their attack, something that Hill promised to investigate further.

"My sincerest apologies, sir." J.A.R.V.I.S' voice echoes throughout the deck as Tony moves over to sit on a couch, glass shards crunching beneath his feet as he walks through the room, "There was some kind of malfunction with the Iron Legion protocol. I'll work on rectifying it right away."

"How did they find me?" Harper asks, mumbling a 'thank you' to Bruce when he passes her a cooling pack for her bruising abdomen. It'll likely be fully healed by the morning, but the cooling pack should help to relief some of the pain for now.

"They've probably known the entire time." Steve says.

Harper places the pack to her stomach through her T-Shirt, shivering slightly from the cold. Thor looks perplexed, "But why attack now? Why not earlier?"

"They wanted to wait until she was alone." Black Wi-Natasha explains, "When she was more vulnerable."

"I mean, I thought I put up a pretty good fi-."

"Kid, not now. Grown up talk." Tony says, cutting her off swiftly when she attempts to justify herself. In her defense, she still thinks she put up a good fight all things considered.

"Is there any chance of them coming back?" Bruce asks, voice slightly apprehensive.

Harper shakes her head, "They won't come back."

"Did you hear me when I said grown up talk or is this a new thing you're doing now?" Tony asks, his tone half serious and half joking. She can't tell if it's a genuine question or he's just trying to be patronising again.

"They said they don't need me. They have something stronger."

Their words keep echoing throughout her mind. She should be relieved that they don't need her - that they hopefully won't be after her any more - but she's more frightened than relieved. Sure, she's nowhere near as powerful as any of The Avengers (and she doubts she ever will be), but she's still an enhanced individual. She still has powers that, with the correct training, could likely be quite powerful, and they said that they have something stronger?

Part of her wants to know what that something is, and part of her wants to ignore its supposed existence. 

"Something stronger?" Clint asks, sounding slightly more interested than usual. He hasn't said much since they sat down; he's mostly been silently observing the situation.

She shrugs, "Well, unless my German translation is a bit off. Otherwise, I think that's what they said."

"You can speak German now?" Tony asks, actually looking somewhat surprised for once. 

She nods, "Since I was nine."

"So you've been speaking it for a year, then?"

Harper narrows her eyes at him. "I'm thirteen." 

"What could they have meant by 'something stronger'?" Natasha asks, moving the conversation along before either of them can make another snide remark.

"The Scepter."

She hears Steve murmur it after a few moments, everyone's eyes landing on him.

"The what? There's a scepter now?" Harper asks.

She looks around at The Avengers. She's intrigued by this 'scepter', but it seems to be yet another thing that she's not allowed to know about, despite her curiosity practically screaming at her to find out. They're all silent, some of them more deep in thought than the others, but all of them clearly considering Steve's suggestion to some extent.

"Okay, I think it's about time that you go to bed." Tony says, breaking the silence. He stands up from the couch and makes his way towards the staircase, Harper protesting his decision as he leaves.

"What? But, Mr Stark, I-."

"Romanoff can walk with you, if you want." He calls back as he begins to ascend the staircase.

She looks over at Natasha, the two of them making awkward eye contact for the briefest of moments before Harper hastily looks away. She doesn't even know Natasha - the last thing she wants is to burden her with something so trivial. She stands up, making a beeline for the staircase heading down to the living quarters, mumbling a response to Tony as she passes.

"No, that's fine."

She doesn't really want to be alone right now, but she doesn't feel comfortable mentioning that for multiple reasons.

"Actually, can you go with her anyway? You know, to make sure that she doesn't take any detours?" Tony asks Natasha, stopping Harper before she heads down the staircase. "I need to go and work on the Iron Legion protocol. Bruce?" He says, addressing the last part to Bruce.

The team begins to disperse. Bruce follows Tony up to the labs whilst Natasha walks over to Harper, passing her as she begins to descend the staircase. Harper rushes after her, loitering behind her awkwardly as they head downstairs before moving to walk alongside her. They walk through the hallways of the tower in a suspended state of silence that Harper quickly grows bored of.

"Sorry about this." She murmurs, "He's been treating me like a baby since I got here."

A beat passes before Natasha replies, catching Harper off guard when she does.

"When was that?" She asks.

"A couple of weeks ago."

"I would get used to it if I were you."

"Thor said the same thing when I told him about it." Harper says with a laugh that falters when she feels a jolt of pain shoot through her. She winces, assuming that her hitch went unnoticed, but Natasha sees it.

"What's wrong?"

"Those guys zapped me real bad." Harper admits, "It'll heal by the morning."

"Is that your thing? Healing?"

Harper's surprised by her interest but she takes it in her stride nonetheless.

"That and teleportation. Oh, and Photokinesis." She replies, flickering the lights in her hands briefly to illustrate her point. "Mr Stark calls them my 'flashlight hands'. I mean, they're a lot more than just flashlights, but I'm still working on all that."

"I can see why Tony likes you so much. You remind him of himself." Natasha muses.

She should take it as a compliment, but she can't tell what point Natasha's trying to make with that comment. She doesn't know her well enough yet.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Natasha looks at her questioningly, "You tell me."

"Good. Definitely good." Harper says after having pondering on the thought for a moment. "Mr Stark is pretty cool. Patronising, but cool."

She's certain of that fact. She may get frustrated when he treats her like a child, but he still looks out for her. All of them do, and although they bear somewhat of a responsibility towards her, they're under no obligation to look out for her the way that they do. She appreciates that more than any of them can know.

They reach the living quarters and their adjacent rooms, Harper stopping at her door and turning back to Natasha. "I'm here."

Natasha nods, turning away from her and beginning to head back in the direction that she came, presumably to head up to the labs where she suspects the other Avengers have all congregated at. 

"Natasha." Harper calls out to her before she leaves. She stops and turns back to her from the door. "Thank you. Don't tell Mr Stark, but I didn't really want to walk here alone. They said that they don't need me, but I'm still scared that they might come back."

She feels like she should be thanking her more. She feels like she should be thanking all of them more. If it wasn't for them...she doesn't want to think about that right now. She doesn't want to think about that at all.

"It's okay." Natasha tells her, and she feels like it genuinely might be despite everything that's happened, even for just a moment.


	6. 6

She jolts awake in the dark and she lays there, blinking rapidly and sweating profusely as the images play on repeat throughout her mind. She sits up, her throat dry as she struggles to gasp for air, and instinctively curls in on herself, her head resting on her knees as she takes in shuddered breaths.

This isn't the first time that this has happened. She's had a few nightmares in the last couple of weeks, the images seemingly more vivid and horrifying each time. She hadn't expected to just forget about it - how could she, really? She had at least thought that she'd be able to cope with it better the longer it happened.

Everything that happened just last night gave her brain a lot more to work with. Even more stimulus to concoct more horrifying images to torment her with.

She staggers to her feet, breaths still laboured and head spinning, and stumbles towards the door. She bursts into the hallway, thankful for the cool air of the empty space, and makes her way for the kitchen area.

She walks inside and heads straight for the refrigerator, wincing when the light from inside spills out into the empty kitchen. She grabs a water bottle and downs the contents, thankful for the relief it provides her throat.

Closing the refrigerator door, she rests her head against the cool metal and closes her eyes, trying to will the images out of her mind whilst simultaneously attempting to stop her tears.

She feels pathetic. She feels pathetic and helpless and alone. Feeling alone is the worst. She misses them constantly, and it hurts even more to think that...

"Shouldn't you be asleep?"

She jumps again, the lights in her hands sparking on as she raises them defensively (though she's still not fully with it, so she doubts she could put up much of a fight). She relaxes upon the sight of her, heading towards the counter and leaning against it without another word, turning her face away from her to hide her tearful expression.

"You're really not good at sneaking around, are you?" Natasha says, her voice half serious and half teasing. It's difficult to tell with her.

She doesn't reply to her, too afraid that her voice might betray her and show just how vulnerable she is. She doesn't know Natasha well enough to let her see that. The Avenger she knows the most right now is Thor, and she doesn't even know if she'd be comfortable telling him about any of this.

She hears Natasha approach her but she doesn't turn around, keeping her eyes fixed on the dark countertop beneath her.

"Hey." Natasha murmurs, walking up behind her and extending a hand out to her.

The second her hand lands on Harper's shoulder, everything falls apart all over again despite her attempts at stopping just that from happening.

She loses control, low sobs ripping out of her throat and her face contorting in pure anguish and distress. She feels Natasha's hand tighten slightly on her shoulder and, without properly thinking about it, she turns around and hugs her tightly. She feels Natasha stiffen, and for a second she considers pulling back and apologising, but then she feels her hand touch her back and she relaxes.

She doesn't know how long she cries for, but she knows that it's for a fair amount of time. Surprisingly, Natasha stays with her the entire time, offering her a sense of comfort that she hadn't even realised she had needed or missed. She's needed a hug since the day this all began - she just didn't know how to say that.

She pulls back eventually, mumbling an apology to Natasha instantly. "I'm sorry. I just...I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Why haven't you told anyone?" Natasha asks, arms now crossed, "You could've told Tony or Steve, or even Clint. He may act all tough and like he doesn't care, but that's because he actually does."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't." Natasha tells her, her voice suddenly rather stern. It frightens Harper slightly. "Don't apologise for something like that. There are much worse things to be sorry about."

Harper sighs, "I didn't feel like I could tell anyone."

"Why?"

Harper shrugs, "There are bigger problems in the world than mine."

"That's not an excuse."

Harper's surprised that she cares this much. She's thankful in a way, but she's still surprised. Natasha doesn't even know her.

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologising."

Harper nods, "Right, sorry."

Natasha narrows her eyes, though it's less scrutinising and more out of amusement than anything, which makes Harper relax slightly. Natasha turns away and makes her way out of the room, Harper following her without a second thought.

"Can I ask you something?" She asks, Natasha humming lightly in response. "Can you lift Thor's hammer? Because I've been trying since I got here, and I still can't do it."

* * *

All things considered, her day's been relatively normal. Same old breakfast, same old training. Her teleportation's been steady, though she hasn't attempted any long distance jumps just yet, not since the one she accidentally took to get to New York. Part of her would try it, but then the other part of her is terrified about ending up stranded in the middle of the ocean. Her main defense is in her Photokinetic Constructs, and if last night taught her anything it's that she should be perfecting those more than anything. If she can, then she's got a constant defensive mechanism at her disposal, and that's something she could really do with right about now.

She hasn't seen much of the Avengers today. She briefly saw Clint at around midday when she was eating lunch in the kitchen, but that's about it. She took a trip up to the Party Deck to see how the clean up efforts were coming along, and she was beyond surprised to find that all of the windows had already been fixed by the middle of the afternoon. Then again, Mr Stark probably has enough money to refit all the windows in the building a hundred times over.

It's the early evening when she decides that she should probably try and find someone. She's been staying out of their business for most of the day, still slightly guilty about the night before despite being reassured that it wasn't her fault, but once she finishes her supper she feels like she should at least try and find someone. After washing up her plates and putting them away (she got told off by Tony the last time she didn't), she heads out of the kitchen and makes her way up towards the laboratories, making the logical assumption that they might be up there.

She finds them, all six of them, in Bruce's lab, gathered around a projected image above the central table. She watches from the doorway, admittedly eavesdropping when perhaps she shouldn't be on their conversation.

"Is Hill certain that the information is correct?" Thor asks, voice skeptical.

Steve nods, "Seems like it. Even if it's not, it's the strongest lead that we've got."

"Stop trying to sneak around. I told you that you aren't good at it."

Harper jumps when Natasha turns to look at her, prompting everyone else to look at her and make her feel even more embarrassed. Tony gives her an accusatory look, though the others don't seem too bothered by her presence.

"That's the scepter, isn't it? Why's it so important?" She asks as she walks into the room and moves to the central table, examining the projection curiously. "I mean, what exactly can it do? Time travel? Mind control?"

It's subtle, but she doesn't miss the way that Thor's expression shifts for a moment, her eyes widening as she realises. "Wait, mind control? I was only joking."

Tony raises an eyebrow at her, crossing the room to her side. "Don't you have work to be doing with those flashlight hands of yours?" He asks.

"I have been working on them. For three hours, in fact." She replies quickly, combatting his attempts at shutting her out of the conversation. "I want to help you guys."

"Don't most kids just watch TV when they're bored?"

"But I'm not like most kids, am I?"

He gives her a look. It's not amusement or surprise, more like a 'touché' kind of look. It still doesn't seem to be enough to convince him, as he begins to escort her out of the room as the others fall back into conversation about the scepter.

She stops at the door, turning to him with a pleading look in her eyes. "Come on, Mr Stark! Let me help!"

"We can talk about this when you're older." He says dismissively.

"Mr Stark, I can do this! I want to help you guys!"

"No offense, kid, but those blinkers of yours aren't gonna be as helpful as you think."

"They're not blinkers!" She protests, her frustration growing by the second. She's sick of being disregarded over something as ridiculous as her age. She knows she has a gift - a gift that she could be using to help people like the Avengers are. She wants to help.

"Really? You might want to stop them doing that, then." He tells her. She looks down at her hands, eyes going wide when she sees them flickering rapidly like broken flashlights. She shakes them and concentrates, relieved when they calm down after a few moments.

"Why are they doing that?"

She sighs exasperatedly, trying to stop herself from becoming all riled up again. "Probably because I'm annoyed." She admits through slightly gritted teeth.

"Yeah, I've been getting that a lot recently, too."

She narrows her eyes at him again. She doesn't have to be a genius to know that he's directing that comment at her.

"Are we done here?" Tony asks rhetorically, turning away from her and beginning to head back into the room. She considers protesting again, but she ends up tuning into what Steve's saying instead.

"Coulson said that it's located in Sokovia, and based on the information he gave us it seems about right." Steve explains as Tony walks back into the middle of the room.

"When do we head out?" Clint asks him.

"Tomorrow. What about any civilians?"

"The Iron Legion can keep them out of the way whilst we go for the scepter." Tony says to Steve whilst Harper hesitantly moves back into the room, listening intently at the door at what they're saying. Natasha notices her, the two of them briefly making eye contact, but she surprisingly doesn't mention anything, instead turning back to Steve as he speaks up again.

"It's not just the scepter. If this goes to plan, we'll be stopping Strucker's experiments, also. This could be it. The last part in taking down HYDRA."

The room falls silent, the Avengers all looking among each other with expressions that Harper can only describe as prideful on their faces. A moment passes before Harper breaks the silence.

"Sorry, but, Strucker? Who's Strucker?"

Tony turns to her and looks at her incredulously, though it's kinda hard to tell whether or not he's being serious. "You know, you just ruined a really important moment there."

"You can't be serious?"

"I am." He replies, briefly glancing down at his wrist before looking back to her, "Oh, look, it's your bedtime!"

"But it's only like seven o'clock! And you're not even wearing a watch!" She protests, gesturing to his blank wrist.

"Doesn't change what I said."


	7. 7

She feels like she shouldn't be surprised when she jolts awake for the second night in a row, but she can't help it when she is. She sits up instantly, muscles aching from the sudden movement, as she tries to regain her lost breath desperately. She opens her eyes when she hears the door open, any and all apprehension she had being settled when she sees a familiar face at the door.

"Did it happen again?" Natasha asks, leaning back against the door frame casually and with confidence that nobody should have so early in the morning.

"I'm sorry." Harper replies, feeling ashamed despite herself. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

"You didn't."

Harper looks at her properly now, taking in the clothes that she's wearing and putting two and two together. "You're getting ready to leave, aren't you?" She asks, though it's rhetorical considering that she already knows the answer. "Mr Stark should let me help."

"It's not your fight."

"Isn't it? Those HYDRA bastards killed my parents! They almost killed me! Tell me how this isn't my fight?!" Harper shouts back, and she knows that her hands are flickering rapidly as her anger spikes, but Natasha doesn't seem remotely fazed by it.

"Because you're just a kid." She replies bluntly and nonchalantly, Harper's small outburst having no lasting effect on her whatsoever.

Her anger subsides and she can feel the light fading away from her hands, and she sighs deeply before murmuring a response under her breath. "As everyone keeps reminding me."

"Maybe you should be apologising instead of complaining." Natasha replies, and Harper's surprised that she even heard her last comment, but her response brings a smirk to her exhausted and frustrated face.

"I thought I shouldn't be apologising all the time."

"Don't be a smartass, kid." She tells her, her voice lacking any bite or callousness.

Natasha's being kind to her, but she's not allowing her to get away with anything that Tony wouldn't. It's a middle ground that she hasn't found with any of the other Avengers. On one end of the scale there's Tony, who won't let her get away with anything despite her situation; and then on the other end there's Bruce and Thor, who wouldn't exactly let her rush into any kind of mission with them, but they'd allow her to get away with far more than the others.

Her parents fit into different parts of that spectrum. Her Dad was around the range of Clint - mostly reserved and stern but could be an occasional pushover. Her Mom was right in the middle, something that could be both a blessing and a curse.

"Why won't Mr Stark let me help?"

"It's not just him." Natasha replies, "Steve wouldn't allow it, either."

"What do you think I should do?"

"I think you should keep trying to keep your head above the water."

Harper can tell that Natasha's responding honestly. She's not lying to her or patronising her for the sake of it. She's giving her a genuine response, and for that reason she can't find it in herself to argue against it like she does with Tony when he talks her down.

It's for that reason that she only says two simple words to Natasha as she leaves, the need to argue that she had before now gone.

"Good luck."

* * *

Harper packs the food into her backpack, humming lightly to herself as she does. She checks that she's got everything one last time before pulling the bag shut and slinging it over her shoulder, briefly glancing down at the watch on her wrist to check the time.

11:48am. She's still got plenty of time to see everything.

"If you don't mind me asking, where are you going?" J.A.R.V.I.S' asks robotically.

"Sightseeing." Harper replies as she heads for the kitchen door.

"I wouldn't advise that, Harper. You shouldn't go alone."

"Well, I would ask Hill, but she doesn't really seem to be the sightseeing type." Harper jokes, her humor falling flat with the A.I software. "Come on, J.A.R.V.I.S! What's the worst that could happen?" She asks, stopping at the door to the kitchen.

"I have calculated over seven hundred incidences resulting in some form of disaster. Shall I run through them by probability?"

"No thanks." Harper replies, slightly taken aback by the A.I's response. She wouldn't of thought that there'd be over seven hundred chances of disaster... "Look, I'll be fine. Trust me."

"I have been told by Mr Stark not to trust you when you say that."

Harper groans exasperatedly, though in hindsight she should've seen that one coming. "Of course you have. Look, I'm taking Natasha's advice. I'm keeping my head above the water. Trying to be normal for a change."

All she wants is to do something normal. Go out sightseeing and eat some lunch in Central Park perhaps. You know? The kinds of things that normal people do when visiting New York. Besides, she didn't leave all day yesterday, and it quickly became clear to her that the tower gets increasingly boring when the Avengers aren't around.

"Leaving may result in you being recognised. Mr Stark ordered me to prevent that from happening." J.A.R.V.I.S explains rationally.

"I can't stay cooped up in here forever. I haven't left since I got here. Besides, I doubt that those HYDRA guys are gonna come after me again. They said that they don't need me." Harper replies matter-of-factly, "Well, unless my translation was off."

"It wasn't. I can verify that your translation was correct."

"Which means that it's okay for me to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's the first stop on my list." Harper says, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing the list in question as proof.

It's written in her scrawly and rushed handwriting, but it's still clear enough to read.

_Metropolitan Museum of Art, Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Brooklyn Bridge._

If it wasn't for the fact that she can teleport, she's certain that she wouldn't even try to complete the entire list in one day.

"I strongly advise against that."

"Why is that? Army of robots attacking the people? Earthquake about to strike?" Harper asks jokingly, not taking the A.I's advice remotely seriously, making the assumption that it's just following the commands set by Tony.

"There's currently a volatile hostage situation and the police are unable to detain the suspects."

The smirk that was on Harper's face disappears in a second. "What?"

J.A.R.V.I.S doesn't reply, but the television on the other side of the room lights up, presumably being controlled by the A.I. Harper crosses the room and sits on the couch opposite the television, her eyes remaining fixated on the images playing on the flat screen in front of her.

"All exits are blocked and several bombs have been planted throughout the building. Police are currently dealing with those threats." J.A.R.V.I.S tells her as the news footage of the event plays before her eyes, images shifting between news reporters stood outside of the building to exterior shots of the building itself.

"But what about the people?" Harper murmurs after processing what J.A.R.V.I.S tells her for a few moments. If the police are dealing with the bombs - which, of course, they should be doing - whose helping the people out?

"Ten hostages being detained by five armed assailants."

"Why are they doing this?" Harper's eyes are focused on the television still, all the information playing on repeat in her mind as she mumbles in response to J.A.R.V.I.S.

She considers the fact that there's only five assailants. Those HYDRA agents may have taken her down, but she put up a decent fight against the first few that came at her. She could probably take them down if she was smart about it.

"The bombs may indicate it being a possible terror threat, though it is uncertain if it's driven by that in any way."

Harper shrugs, "So they could just be a bunch of psychos acting out some deranged fantasy?"

"Possibly, yes."

She watches in horror as the reporter on the screen jumps with a fright to the sound of echoing gunshots from within the building, her eyes widening as she becomes even more fixated on the screen. The panicked face of the reporter and the screams of those around him that only seem to amplify as more gunshots are fired are what make her decision.

She turns and heads for the door, unintentionally ignoring J.A.R.V.I.S when he asks where she's going. She practically throws her bag down at the doorway as she passes and she's certain that all the food inside is ruined, but that's hardly her priority right now.

There's something important that she needs to deal with.

* * *

In hindsight, she probably should've thought her plan through more before she rushed out of the tower.

Then again, she's not exactly one to think things through much before attempting them.

It's not like she hasn't got the capability to. According to Bruce, her brain capacity gives her a cognitive advantage over most others, so realistically she should be utilising it. Maybe if she had earlier, the situation with those HYDRA agents may have gone done differently. Maybe if she had stopped for a moment to think on her way over to the museum, she'd have an actual plan.

She probably should've done that before she teleported inside of the museum, barely avoiding the detection of the assailants as she scrambled to find a place to hide. She thought that getting inside of the museum would be the difficult part, what with all the reporters and people waiting anxiously outside for any developments in the tense situation, but that part was surprisingly easy given the circumstances.

Now she's got to worry about taking down the assailants and keeping the people safe whilst doing it.

She could just charge in there and take them down. If they shot at her, she'd probably make it out okay. It would hurt like hell, but as long as she didn't get shot multiple times she'd be okay. She'd heal, but that's not what she's concerned about. Sure, she'd make it out okay, but she can't exactly say the same for the hostages.

She's gonna need to draw them away from the hostages somehow before she attacks.

She considers making some kind of sound to draw one or more of them towards her, but before she can even attempt such a thing, the phone in her pocket begins to ring loudly throughout the room. The beeping ringtone echoes throughout the room as Harper scrambles to pull the device out of her pocket to silence it, the sound of approaching footsteps making her panic grow by the second.

She panics even more when she sees the caller ID on the screen.

_Tony Stark_

She curses under her breath. J.A.R.V.I.S must've said something.

"What are you doing here, kid?"

The phone falls silent as Harper looks up at the men looming over her. There's two of them, both armed and pointing their weapons directly at her, neither of them looking pleased at the sight of her.

"Sightseeing." She replies sarcastically, surprising herself with the confidence in her tone despite her situation. She probably shouldn't be acting cocky with guns being pointed at her head.

They don't seem impressed either, their hands tightening around the guns in their hands and their scowls growing.

"I would say that I'm sorry about this, but I'm not." Harper murmurs as she slides her phone back into her pocket, the two men look at her bemusedly.

"What are you talking about, kid?" One of them asks gruffly, clearly frustrated.

"Don't worry about it."

She hastily presses her hands together and draws them out, forming a long staff of light between her hands out of thin air as the two men watch in horror and awe. She wields the bright weapon with two hands, swinging for the men's feet and knocking them to the ground. They land with pained groans, their guns sliding out of their hands as they hit the ground. Harper rushes straight for the weapons and smashes them to pieces with the staff of light, alerting the other assailants and the hostages to her presence.

The panicked hostages watch in horror as the still armed assailants fire shots at her, and Harper's thankful that they have terrible aim when she manages to dodge all of their shots. She teleports behind a nearby wall, using it as a barrier to protect herself from the bullets that the assailants persistently keep firing at her.

"Grab that girl!"

Generating a small projectile of light in her hands, she peers around the wall, cautious of the bullets, and hastily launches it at one of the unarmed assailants when he gets dangerously close. It strikes him right in the chest and sends him down to ground, unconscious instantly.

It gives her the confidence to fight back.

It's not long until the five assailants are on the ground, their weapons destroyed at their unconscious sides. The hostages - five men, 4 women and a child - look at her with horrified and grateful expressions on their faces, still frozen despite the fact that there's no longer anything keeping them there.

"What are you all doing? Get out of here!"

Some of them do. Eight of them scramble to their feet and rush for the museum door, the sound of relieved cries from outside signalling to Harper that they're safe. Only the child and a woman remains, and Harper quickly realises that there's a problem with the latter of the two that explains why they're still here.

She's gasping heavily, clutching at her leg that's bleeding profusely, so much so that the blood's spilling between her fingers. The child - a young boy that Harper only assumes is her son - sits by her side, his face pale and hands shaking.

Bullet wound for sure. They must've shot her whilst she was taking them down. She would've bled out by now if they had done so sooner.

"M-mom? Mom, what do I do? Mom!"

The pure anguish and panic on his face is unbearable to see, and it's also horrifyingly familiar. The woman is in pain, and it's visible despite her clear attempts at trying to disguise it from her son. The color seems to drain from her face by the second and her breathing's becoming more ragged.

She needs to act fast.

She kneels down beside the woman and the boy, deciding that she should get the latter to be active first. She looks at him and tries to be reassuring in her tone, "Hey. What's your name?"

He looks hesitant, but he stutters out a reply after a moment passes, "N-Noah. But, my M-mom, she's-."

"She's going to be just fine, okay?" Harper tries, looking over at the woman with what she only hopes is a reassuring smile, "Isn't that right?"

The woman tries to smile at her son, but it quickly turns into a wince as she clearly struggles not to cry out in pain. Noah's eyes grow wider and more tearful at the sight. Harper quickly tries to change the subject.

"Listen, Noah. I'm gonna need you to go out there and get some help, okay? Policemen, the ambulance, it doesn't matter. Can you do that for me?"

He nods, casting a glance over at his mom for some reassurance. She doesn't look at him, her eyes instead fixated on the wound that's rapidly gushing out blood. He looks at the blood and it seems to be enough to prompt into action, as he's quickly on his feet and rushing for the door in seconds whilst Harper turns her attention to the woman, who looks even more distressed than she did just seconds before.

"The paramedics are on their way, okay? Everything's going to be okay."

She feels like she's partially saying that to reassure herself.

"I-It hur..."

"Shh, it's okay. It's gonna be okay. Just...just don't look at it. Focus on me, okay?" She tells the woman, and the voice in the back of her mind is telling her that she's giving terrible advice.

She's not sure of what else to do so she scrambles to place her hands over the wound, hoping that it may help stench the flow of blood until the paramedics arrive.

She hadn't expected to feel a crippling sense of pain course through her the moment her hands made contact with the wound. She feels it spread up her arms and expel itself throughout her body, the very sensation making her feel nauseous. It's frighteningly similar to the bullet wound she sustained not too long ago, and although it's agonising, it's not as vivid as that wound was. It's duller, less concentrated.

She jerks her hands away only when the paramedics rush in, stumbling away from the woman as they approach with a stretcher and medical equipment. She's gasping for air, her breathing similar to how the woman's was though not as ragged. She can hear the paramedics loading the woman onto the stretcher and asking her how she's feeling, and it surprises them when the woman shows no sign of the pain that she was feeling despite the fact that she's still bleeding from her entry wound.

She hears them talk about patching up the wound as she continues to stumble away, stopping after every movement when the pain ripples through her repeatedly. She hears their footsteps as they approach her and she hears kind voices asking if she's okay, but her mouth's gone dry and her head's spinning and the pain is making it difficult to focus on anything but itself.

She still tries. She imagines the Stark Tower over and over again in her head, trying to will herself out of the building and into another.

It comes as a relief to her when it actually works.


	8. 8

Harper opens her eyes when she feels herself materialise again. She blinks numerous times in an attempt to clear her blurred vision, but it doesn't do anything for the pain or the sense of nausea she's experiencing.

"Harper?"

She winces when Steve places his hand on her shoulder, something that he quickly notices and makes him withdraw his hand. He's in his suit, and from that she makes the logical assumption that he and the others must've just got back.

Either that or he's taking a new approach to casual fashion.

"Where are you hurt, Harper?" He asks, voice sounding collected yet concerned despite the unexplained fuzziness to it.

She shakes her head. She's not hurt. She wasn't injured. There's no cuts or bruises to show for it.

She attempts to sit up, abandoning the idea when that all too familiar sense of pain rushes through her again.

Steve notices, gathering her up into his arms as gently as possible - which, given his unmatched strength, isn't as gentle as it could possibly be - and begins to carry her up the tower.

"I...I don't know what h-happened. I..."

She trails off in her explanation, if not for the pain for the fact that she doesn't know how to explain something she doesn't even understand herself. She was fine, and then she wasn't. She wasn't shot, but she feels like she was. She feels like there's a bullet lodged inside of her like there was in that woman's leg. It's...it's almost as if she took her pain. Except that's not possible. At least, she doesn't think it should be possible.

"Shh, just relax." Steve tells her, tone soothing, "We'll talk about it later."

She's almost certain that conversation will involve Mr Stark, and something tells her that he won't exactly be pleased about what she's been getting up to in his absence; she dreads the thought as Steve carries her up the tower, noticing the way she winces in pain every so often despite her attempts to conceal it.

God, she had been so stupid. She would ask herself what she was thinking, but her head isn't exactly in the space to do that at the minute. The pain is currently taking priority, followed closely by her confused and out-of-place thoughts as Steve takes her into the labs.

She hears voices around her - Tony's first followed quickly by Bruce's - and then she's being placed on a table and she's being scanned by something above her head.

"Tony, where are you going?"

She hears a pair of footsteps faintly retreating from the room, and a beat passes before anyone speaks up again, their voices becoming less muffled as she seems to become more well adjusted to her surroundings.

"I-It doesn't make any sense." Bruce stammers, looking back and forth between the monitor and her with perplexity, "There are no contusions. No fractures, bruises, nothing."

"So why is she like this?" Natasha asks, speaking up for the first time.

Bruce stammers out a confused response, the scientist beyond baffled by her state. Their voices are beginning to become a lot clearer as the nausea and dizziness progressively fade, but the pain remains unchanged. She breathes in heavily through her nose, barely paying attention when she hears Bruce speak to her.

"Harper? Where are you hurt?"

"Right l-leg." She gasps as the pain rolls over her again and again and again.

She feels someone roll up her pant leg, and of course they find nothing there, because she wasn't shot or really harmed in any physical way at all. She got off lucky considering that she was running on adrenaline the entire time and honestly had no idea what in the world she was doing.

"What about the blood?" Natasha says as he looks down at her hands.

She had forgotten about the blood on her hands. There's not much of it - she recoiled from the woman before long - but it's at least noticeable. Her skin's relatively pale so the crimson red stands out without much effort.

"Who's blood is it, Harper?" Natasha asks her simply, and she grits her teeth and answers through the constant pain.

"Not mine."

"Not yours? If it's not yours, then who-?"

Tony walks back into the room then, carrying a plug-in ceramic lamp in both hands. He pushes past Clint, taking his position at the side of the overcrowded medical table, and places the lamp down on the table at Harper's side.

"Tony, what-?" Bruce murmurs, looking between him and the lamp with nothing but confusion and disbelief.

"Sit her up." Tony orders, circling around to the side of the table so that he's directly by Harper's head.

"Tony, she's not-." Steve begins to reply.

"Cap, just trust me on this one." Tony interjects, full confidence in his voice.

It seems to be enough to convince Bruce, who hesitantly walks around to Harper's side and tentatively places his hands on her shoulders, slowly lifting her up from the table. He stops for a moment in the process, though it's unclear whether it's due to her flinching or his own hesitation towards the situation. She's put into a sitting position, and it's then that she gets a proper look at the group for the first time.

They all look virtually unharmed, which is surprising considering that they could've only just gotten back from their mission. Clint and Thor aren't in the room, but the other Avengers are. Despite her attempts not too, the pain's still the only thing she can really think about, which persists as she struggles to focus on what Tony's trying to tell her.

"Place your hands on the lamp and do your flashlight thing, okay, kid?" He tells her with a nod to the lamp in question.

"What?" She says through gritted teeth, eyes scrunched up in pain, "M-Mr Stark, I...I don't-."

"Just switch on the hands and touch the lamp, kid." He reiterates, "Remember what I told you about transferring the energy?"

He probably had mentioned something about that before, though it's not exactly at the forefront of her mind at the minute.

Still, she's prompted to listen to his instruction when the pain only seems to become more unbearable, and she's practically slamming her hands down on the lamp within seconds. She focuses the light into her palms, forcing the energy into the lamp so much so that the bulb flickers brightly, and it's not long until she feels the pain seemingly pass out of her body, almost passing through her body and out through her hands.

She stops when she no longer feels it, the bulb dimming as she pulls her hands away and looks at Tony with undeniable bemusement, stammering, "M-Mr Stark, I don't know what happened. Th-there was this lady - at this place I went to, but that's not important - and she got shot, and I tried to help but-."

"You suddenly felt as if you had been shot yourself." He says, his voice monotone. It's not a question, it's a statement. "It's nice to know those healing capabilities of yours are starting to develop."

"Starting to develop?" Harper murmurs, her confusion evident, "Mr Stark, what-?"

Tony ignores her, cutting over her, "You're grounded, kid. Indefinitely."

"Grounded? Why am I-?"

"Don't ask me why because you know why." He tells her, his tone more stern, and it makes her shut up within a second, "You went out there and advertised the fact that you're here to the entire world. You put yourself and everybody else in that museum in danger!"

His voice raises to a shout at the end, Harper paling slightly at the volume of his voice. Sure, she's frustrated Tony before - multiple times without even trying to, in fact - but he's never gotten this mad at her.

"Tony."

She hears Natasha say his name behind her, though she doesn't dare turn away from Tony to look at her. Her tone is cautious, like a warning to the man who is clearly slowly losing his building temper. It's clearly not enough to change his mind, but it stops him for a second as he takes a deep breath, speaking again with a lower toned voice that sounds more frustrated than angry.

"You're grounded, kid." He tells her, and this time she doesn't dare question it.

* * *

"...The public are certain that this young woman is a new Avenger."

"Regardless, Matt, many believe that she must be far too young to be an Aven-."

Harper switches the TV off by the remote and tosses it onto the chair at the side of her room, sick of seeing her face pop up on all of the news channels. She always thought that she'd find it cool to be on TV when she was younger, but the circumstances behind it have resulted in the opposite outcome. Now, she just wants to see something else appear on the screen other than herself.

She doesn't actually know if she should be watching TV. Tony grounded her, and on the few occasions she was grounded in the past, she wasn't allowed to watch any TV to pass the time. Then again, Tony didn't exactly set any parameters on the terms of her grounding, so she's not sure if she's breaking any rules or not.

It's been three days since she was grounded, though to her it feels like no time's passed at all. The news channels are playing the same stories, she's been waking up and following the same routine everyday - eat breakfast, train alone for a while, spend the rest of her day in her room; nothing's really changed across the last seventy-two hours.

She hasn't seen Tony once since he grounded her, which is admittedly probably for the best. He's mad at her, and she knows that she shouldn't blame him for that - what, with the PR debacle she caused by going out in public and using her abilities without disguising herself. She's thrown away any chance she may have of living a somewhat normal life, and although Mr Stark's likely got copious amounts of people working on the press side of the situation, the situation still could've easily been avoided if she actually used the advanced intellect that she's supposed to have.

For supposedly being a genius, she's sure been acting like an idiot.

She was trying to help. That's all she wanted to do. It's complicated. Her abilities almost qualify her to help in any way that she can, but at the same time her age and lack of experience contradict that immensely. She doesn't want to admit it, but perhaps she in too over her head with all of this.

She sighs, getting up from her bed and making her way towards the bathroom with the intention of brushing her teeth. She's already dressed for bed, clad in a grey shirt embroidered with a 'Stark Industries' logo with a pair of grey sweatpants to match. Personally she would've gone for something more colorful, but the clothes are nice and warm, which is good considering that her room always seems to get cold at night despite the fact that J.A.R.V.I.S regulates the temperature. It's why she always has to walk around with shoes on, even when she's just relaxing in her room.

She reaches the sink and grabs the toothbrush and paste, finding that there's none left. She mentally scolds herself. She remembers using the last of it this morning and had the intention of asking J.A.R.V.I.S where she could find some more in the day. She would've set a reminder on her phone, but Tony had that confiscated from her.

"J.A.R.V.I.S, I'm out of toothpaste. Where can I get some more?"

Nothing. No response from the A.I software.

"I know that I'm grounded, but I still need to keep up with hygiene and all." She says, "Can you help me out here? I'm sure Mr Stark won't mind."

Still nothing, which definitely strikes her as odd. Sure, J.A.R.V.I.S' loyalties lie with Tony and Tony primarily, but he's never not answered her before. Something doesn't seem right.

She puts the toothbrush down and heads out of her room, automatic lights flickering on as she steps out into the darkness of the hallway. She hesitantly approaches the door she knows to be Bruce's - she should probably go to Tony, but she'd rather go to the genius that doesn't despise her at the minute - and knocks it gently before stepping back.

No answer.

She tries again.

Still no answer.

So she tries Steve. And then Thor. And then Clint. She even tries Natasha.

No answer from anyone.

It's then that she knocks on Tony's door, slightly lighter than she did on the others, though there's no change in the final outcome.

None of them are on this floor.

She takes a stab at it and visualises the labs, materialising within the high-tech facilities after a couple of moments, hopeful to find at least one of the Avengers up there. She doesn't, but she's quick to notice that most of the tech in the lab seems to be switched off.

J.A.R.V.I.S' system probably just needs rebooting, she figures.

She walks over to one of the consoles, tapping it so that it illuminates at the palms of her hands. She scans the buttons and controls briefly, quickly recognising many of them from the multiple of times she's witnessed Tony and Bruce use them since she got here.

The inputs are precise and correct, but it's not until she's greeted by frustrating red letters on the screen.

ACCESS DENIED

She probably should've expected that.

She stops for a second and takes on Tony's advice, using her brain to actually tackle the problem logically. Since J.A.R.V.I.S is non-functioning, it's not actually as difficult to override the security system as she thought it would be, but it still takes a couple of seconds for her to get J.A.R.V.I.S back online.

What appears before her is a broken and glitching orange hologram. A ripped up manifestation of what the A.I software usually is. A shell of J.A.R.V.I.S.

It's as if he's been destroyed...

"I've got to find Mr Stark."

She runs this time, hoping that she might run into someone on the way down. She's sprinting down the stairs, so much so that she almost trips over a couple of times, but she's relieved when she spots Tony - along with the other Avengers; Hill; Helen Cho, a doctor that assists the Avengers; and a man that she doesn't recognise - stood in the Party Deck.

She rushes down to them, eyes set on Tony as she heads into the room, breathless.

"Mr Stark, I know that I'm grounded, but there's something wrong with J.A.R-."

And then she's hit by some kind of blast that sends her flying towards the group, more precisely into the wooden table that's in front of it, which she crashes into and breaks upon impact. She's lying there, and her shoulder sears in pain from the blast, as does her back from her fall, and she's fairly certain that she's cut the side of her head but she can't be sure.

"Don't you just hate it when someone interrupts you? I really hate that."

She helped up as a voice talks (she's certain that if it weren't for the so-called 'development' of her healing capabilities, she'd be beyond incapacitated at this point), and it's when she's up that she discovers that it's actually is a robot talking. It's a severely run-down build of one of the Iron Legion bots, except this bot seems to have a mind of it's own, unlike the other bots which follow protocol.

"Who sent you?" Thor asks, voice unwavering.

The robot plays an audio clip of a voice that's familiar, and it takes a second for Harper to fully register who it is.

"I see a suit of armor around the world."

Tony. That's his voice.

"Ultron." Bruce murmurs behind her, realisation visible in his face.

Tony seems to realise it too, as his face bears the exact same expression as Bruce's. The others seem to be just as confused as her, but Harper at least figures out what their faces are showing.

It's recognition.

"In the flesh. Or, no, not yet. Not this chrysalis." Ultron says, gesturing to his mangled, metallic body, "But I'm ready. I'm on mission."

"What mission?" Natasha asks.

"Peace in our time." Ultron replies, and that's all he needs to say before all out hell breaks out. The Iron Legion bursts through the wall behind Ultron, rushing in and firing shots off at them the moment they appear.

She's tackled to the ground by Tony and moved around to the side of a countertop, shielding the two of them from the pandemonium breaking out around the deck. He's standing up before she's even fully behind the counter, ducking low briefly to avoid the gunshots firing off around the room.

"Stay here! Don't move!" He orders, rushing off again before she can so much breathe.

She flinches at the sound of smashing glass, reflexively shielding her head despite her not even being able to see where the glass is being shattered. She hears Thor's hammer collide with metal, gunshots being fired consecutively, shouts of pain and anger. She's registering most of it by hear, the sound of her heart pumping on fear and adrenaline being the only constant.

But then Bruce and Natasha come into her view, the latter firing relentlessly at a Legionaire that's chasing them up the glass-covered staircase, showing no sign of stopping despite the amount of the bullets colliding with its metal casing. It's begin to get closer and closer to them, and it's when she notices Natasha's gun run out of bullets that she disobeys Tony's orders slightly.

She aims towards the Legionaire, concentrating and firing a beam of light directly at it. It goes right through the android, carving a deep hole inside of its body and sending it down to the ground in a crumpled heap. Once it's down, she rushes back behind the counter again, listening to the rest of the fight play out from the safety of her cover.

The pain of her fall is starting to settle in, and she can feel something warm trailing down the side of her face, indicating her earlier suspicion to be true. She doesn't dare move to a place where she can get a proper look at it, not even when the shots stop and Ultron begins to speak again, filling the sudden silence in the destroyed room.

"I'm sorry, I know you mean well. You just didn't think it through." Ultron says, his robotic tone almost sounding disappointed in them. She listens intently to the rogue android, hearing him discuss the idea of how them wanting to protect the world prohibits it from evolving, which puzzles her considering he's hardly shown any reluctance in harming humans. Why would he care about their evolution?

She doesn't like listening to him. It's frightening and confusing and deranged, and she knows that she's heard when Ultron proclaims that the only path to peace is through the extinction of The Avengers.

She emerges from her hiding spot then, firing another beam of light, this time directly for Ultron. It collides with the android and blasts a hole through it as it did the Legionaire, the light fading from its eyes and an eerie murmur coming from it as it shuts down.

"I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me..."

* * *

Harper winces as Natasha presses a damp cloth up to the side of her bleeding forehead. She would do it herself, but she's currently using her other hand to press a similar cloth to her shoulder. Both wounds will heal - likely by the following morning in fact - but it's still best to clean up the wounds beforehand.

"Why did you get back up after you were told to stay down?" Natasha asks, dabbing at the wound more gently when she notices Harper's face change.

"I wanted to help." Harper murmurs, "I thought I could handle it."

"Clearly you were wrong."

"Do you wanna insult me anymore? Only, I thought that was Mr Stark's job." Harper snipes back, a jibe that's clearly lost on Natasha, who doesn't even react to her. "Still can't believe you guys had a party and didn't tell me." She grumbles under her breath.

She knows that she's supposed to be grounded and all, but she would've loved to have gone to a party.

"Should that be your biggest concern right now?"

She groans, but she doesn't say anything this time. She's too tired to bother arguing with Natasha right now, even if she's not the one in the wrong here. Her injuries weren't even sustained when she got up to help her and Bruce, but there's no use in arguing over minor details right now. Natasha's right: they've got more to be concerned about right now.

They all regrouped in the laboratories - except for Thor who attempted to chase a Legionaire that escaped the building - so that Bruce and Tony could check their equipment to see if anything had been damaged. The infrastructure itself turned out to be just fine, but the data's a different story.

"Ultron cleared out. He used the Internet as an escape hatch." Bruce says, standing anxiously by a console at the side of the room, "He's been in everything. Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other."

Rhodey, the man she didn't know out of the group, crosses the room, his arm resting on his wounded shoulder as he talks, "He's in your files, he's in the Internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"

Hill, who's sat at the side of the room attempting to extract some glass from her foot, looks up at him in grim realisation, "Nuclear codes."

"Nuclear codes." Rhodey echoes, "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes?" Natasha questions, Harper wincing when she presses the cloth down slightly harder on her forehead without realising it, "He said he wanted us dead-."

"He didn't say 'dead'. He said "extinct." Steve interjects, the stern tone of his voice indicated his frustration. He's not been showing it much, but it's clear that he's angry at Tony for unintentionally causing the situation.

"He also said he killed somebody." Clint says.

Harper's kept quiet through most of the exchange, but it's when Hill remarks how there was no one else in the building that she remembers why she headed for the Party Deck in the first place.

"Yes, there was." She says, all eyes falling on her, "He killed J.A.R.V.I.S."

It's then that the corrupted hologram of J.A.R.V.I.S appears in the middle of the lab as projected by Tony, who's been surprisingly quiet since they destroyed Ultron's initial body. He turns to her then, his face showing nothing but curiosity for once.

"How did you know?" He asks simply.

"I rebooted the system." She shrugs, "Found him like that. That's what I was coming to tell you."

"You're grounded. Why were you out of your room? That is what still happens when kids are grounded, right?" He questions instantly, turning to Bruce for the latter question, the scientist just shrugging back. Tony drops it when he doesn't get an answer and looks back to Harper, "Forget that, how did you reboot the system without J.A.R.V.I.S being functional?"

"I used my brain."

She had hoped that he might smile at that, but she's not surprised when he doesn't. Just disappointed.

"J.A.R.V.I.S was the first line of defense. He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense." Steve says, looking intently at the hologram as he talks, his voice sounding almost distant.

"No." Bruce disagrees instantly, his voice a low murmur, "Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy. This is...rage."

Thor storms in then, hammer held firm in one hand whilst the other reaches straight for Tony's neck. Thor's fist closes around it, lifting the billionaire off of the ground with ease as his face flushes with rage. Harper looks to Natasha, half expecting her to maybe intervene, but the woman just observes from the sidelines along with everybody else.

Is this supposed to be normal practice after some kind of attack?

"Thor. The Legionnaire."

Thor drops Tony a few moments after Tony speaks up, turning towards him with a look of brewing frustration on his face.

"Trail went cold about 100 miles out, but it's headed north. And it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it, again." He tells them, nostrils flaring in anger as he talks. His eyes filter around the group, his expression softening ever so slightly when his eyes land on Harper, "Little person, are you okay?" He asks her, voice concerned, and Harper gives him a small nod back, careful not to move too much due to her wounded head.

She's touched by his concern, but it's soon brushed over when Natasha brings the topic of conversation back to Ultron, "Genie's out of that bottle. Clear and present is Ultron."

Dr Cho speaks up from the side of the room, directing her words specifically to Tony and Bruce, "I don't understand. You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?"

And for some reason, whatever strange and misguided reason that may be, her comment makes Tony laugh. Bruce, who's stood by his side, shakes his head, trying to subtlety signal at him to stop, as it's clear to everyone else in the room that his laughter is inappropriate, but he either doesn't notice Bruce's signal or just chooses to ignore it.

"You think this is funny?" Thor asks, disbelieving.

"No. It's probably not, right?" Tony asks rhetorically, turning back to the group, "This is very terrible. Is it so...It is. It's so terrible."

"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand."

"No. I'm sorry." Tony says, cutting Thor off and walking towards the enraged God with no hesitation whatsoever, "I'm sorry. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this."

"Tony, maybe this might not be the time." Bruce murmurs cautiously.

"Really?! That's it?" Tony asks, turning back to Bruce, "You just roll over, show your belly every time somebody snarls?"

"Only when I've created a murder bot."

"We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?"

"Well, you did something right. And you did it right here." Steve interjects their small argument, "Avengers were supposed to be different than S.H.I.E.L.D."

Part of Harper wants to ask something about S.H.I.E.L.D, but she's aware that now, more than ever, is not the time. The best thing she can do right now is keep quiet whilst The Avengers sort this out and try not to wince when Natasha subconsciously presses the cloth to her head more when someone's anger flares up.

"Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?" Tony asks, looking around the room as if he's waiting for someone to challenge him on it, "Saved New York?"

No one challenges him directly, though Rhodey does make a couple of sarcastic remarks that she can't help but smirk at. The smirk fades when she sees Natasha give her a look out of the corner of her eye.

"A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing 300 feet below it." Tony says vehemently, pausing for a second before continuing in a more solemn tone, "We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the livelong day, but...that up there, that's the endgame. How were you guys planning on beating that?"

"Together." Steve tells him simply, not a shadow of doubt in his voice nor expression.

"We'll lose."

Harper winces at the sincerity in his voice, but it's not something that anybody else notices.

"Then we'll do that together, too." Steve replies, and it seems to be enough to settle Tony for now, but definitely not permanently.

"Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us." He says, looking around to the rest of the group this time, "The world's a big place. Let's start making it smaller."

"And how do we do that?" Harper asks, the question slipping out automatically.

"Oh, you're not doing anything." Tony says, now directing his attention onto her, "You're going back to bed because you're still in trouble, you shouldn't be here and this is an adult problem."

Ordinarily, she'd probably argue back, perhaps remark how it'll become a whole world problem if they don't catch Ultron, but she's too tired and hurt and she knows that most of the others are as well, so she bites her tongue and nods this time around.

She's picking her battles because she doubts this'll be the last.


	9. 9

She's up the next morning before the sun even is, though the little sleep she had was restless. Her injuries healed regardless, so they weren't what kept her up until the early hours of the morning. She couldn't stop thinking about what happened with Ultron. All those things he said about evolving and the fact that he commanded the Legionaire to run off with the scepter. His behaviour was sporadic and sudden, and she's been lying awake for hours trying to piece together the events.

She hasn't exactly gotten far.

What she does know: she's been looking in the wrong place.

She changes out of her torn and splintered sleepwear from the previous night (she hadn't been bothered to do so last night) as silently as possible - not that she expects anybody will be awake to hear her, anyway - and puts on some new, less ripped, clothes on for the day. She brushes her teeth - because, yes, she actually got that toothpaste - before sneaking up to the headquarters.

She needs to access the computers, which actually turns out to be easier than it could've been without J.A.R.V.I.S present. Like last night, it doesn't take long for her to gain control of the tech, and with no proper security system functioning she's free to use it as she sees fit.

Well, at least until she's caught. She really hopes that she doesn't get caught.

She wants to go after Ultron, to stop him, something that, grounded or not, Tony will not allow. To be honest, she doubts that any of The Avengers would be particularly happy with her plan, but she's certain that they'll be happy if...when she returns the scepter.

This scepter means something, and even if she doesn't know what exactly that meaning is, what she does know is that it's important to them.

Which is why she's so disappointed when she finds an abundance of information on the scepter from an initial search on the encrypted database. There's so much information, and she knows that she could easily and willingly sit here for hours and read through all of it, but then Ultron would have even more time on the loose with the scepter and who knows what that could lead to?

So she waters it down, opting to sort through the information by suggesting keywords to the computer to shorten it down.

She thinks back to a name that was mentioned when The Avengers were talking about the scepter.

"Strucker."

His file appears on the screen, only it's empty.

"Oh, crap."

She doesn't know why the file's gone, but she has a feeling that Ultron has something to do with it. She doesn't give up though, instead deciding that she's better off working backwards than just quitting.

She refines the search, instead of focusing in on Strucker specifically looking at files that mention him. Ultron would've had to have gotten out of their database quickly. He would've been in a rush to get away after his body was destroyed. There's no way he could've deleted that many files that quickly.

Luckily, her suspicion turned out to be correct, as images of multiple men and women appear on the screen before her. Names accompany the images, most of them sounding either Russian or German, but a certain name stands out to her due to it being slightly different from the rest.

Ulysses Klaue.

She goes into the file on this Ulysses Klaue person out of pure curiosity. The file briefly mentions Strucker, remarking how this Klaue man is an associate of his. He's not mentioned again, but there's quite a bit of information on the other man available.

_Ulysses Klaue. Citizenship: Belgian. Place of birth: Netherlands. Affiliation: former member of The Intelligencia. Black market arms dealer._

"He's friends with a black market arms dealer?" She murmurs, shrugging, "Figures. Bad guys hang around with bad guys."

Most of the information on this guy seems to add up to what Harper would class as a 'stereotypical shady man', except a harsh red brand on the side of his neck, which stands out to her as unorthodox in his appearance.

Brands don't exist on skin as a fashion statement. They exist to show something, to tell others something about the person who's wearing it or to simply punish the person in question. Perhaps even both.

She has the computer scan the image, focusing in specifically in on the unfamiliar brand, and it's only a couple of seconds before she's provided with a direct translation.

"Woah!" She gasps, surprised by the meaning of the brand, "Steve would not like that kind of language!"

She swore in front of the man a couple of weeks back when she got hurt whilst training. He was less than impressed.

The brand, it turns out, is Wakandan, directly translating to a less than flattering term for 'thief'.

She's heard of Wakanda. It's a country in Africa. Isolated, poor, not often spoken of but still known by the rest of the developing world around it. The question is: what could've this guy stolen from there to be branded as a thief? She doubts that a poor country like Wakanda is going to have a massive expanse of weaponry for the picking.

Perhaps it's some kind of natural resource like iron. But would someone really be branded over the sake of some iron? No, it has to be worth more than that.

She looks into the data the computer has on Wakanda, and though most of it is missing, parts redacted or perhaps never filled in at all, there is a small section available for her to access.

"Vibranium?"

_Vibranium: known as the world's strongest metal, no natural sources remaining, last of it already been used or stolen, origin unknown_

This Klaue guy must've been the one who stole the Vibranium from Wakanda, which explains the brand. The guy's probably used all of it on weapons already, especially considering that he stole it back in 1992...

Unless he didn't.

Ultron wants evolution. If he's made out of the worlds strongest metal, what's going to stop him from doing that?

"Holy shit. _That's_ what he's doing."

* * *

By the time she's flying into the Salvage Yard, where apparently Klaue has a ship full of his stolen goods - information that took a good hour to come by through extensive searches on the database - it's the middle of the day in South Africa. She could've gotten there a lot sooner, but she opted to flying as opposed to teleporting when she ended up transporting herself to the coast of Brazil instead of her desired location.

She ended up landing in the seawater and feeling sick to her stomach because of how far she travelled, and it wasn't until thirty minutes after she managed to get back to shore that she decided to head out again.

She still hasn't cracked long distance teleportation yet. It's a miracle she didn't feel sick when she ended up in New York that first time.

She flies right into the largest ship in the area, taking a wild guess that Klaue might be in there. The bad guys always go in the biggest vehicle, right? To take control and all.

Or maybe her logic is flawed.

"Vibranium."

Or maybe it's not.

She follows the sound of Ultron's familiar, metallic voice, finding him along with some guests within the ship. Klaue is there, along with a man she doesn't recognise who she only assumes is some kind of associate of his. A young man and woman stand alongside Ultron, both only a few years her senior based on appearance alone. Both have rather pale skin, the boy having striking silver hair whilst the girl having longer and darker locks. The latter of the two holds a small, glowing blue canister in his hands, examining it curiously as Klaue replies to Ultron.

She watches the conversation unfold from her hiding place within the ship, thankful that no one else seems to be around the area at the minute.

"You know, it came at great personal cost. It's worth billions."

Ultron chuckles to himself and a beat passes before he speaks again, satisfaction in his robotic voice, "Now so are you."

Another moment passes, and then a phone buzzes in Klaue's associates pocket. Harper sees him take it, but she's not close enough to get a good look at what's on the screen.

"It's all under your dummy holdings. Finance is so weird." Ultron muses, Klaue looking at the phone as it continues to buzz, "But I always say, 'keep your friends rich and your enemies rich and wait to find out which is which'."

Klaue freezes, tearing his eyes away from the room and looking to Ultron with both caution and recognition, "Stark."

"What?" Ultron asks, quick and simple.

"Tony Stark used to say that. To me. You're one of his."

That sets Ultron off the edge. The deranged android begins to go on a rage-filled rant, proclaiming how he's nothing like any of Tony's 'puppets'. Klaue's associate tries to reach for a gun from his pocket, but then the mysterious girl shoots some kind of red mist out of her hands and restrains him.

So, whoever these people are - well, at least the girl - they're not ordinary. They're enhanced, which honestly surprises Harper. In hindsight it shouldn't, given the situation.

"Stark is nothing!" Ultron screams, and then he's hoisting Klaue's arm up and slicing it clean off, and Harper's watching in horror as he boots the wounded man down the nearby stairs with no care in the world, fuelled only by rage.

Her eyes stay fixed on Ultron even as Klaue's associate rushes off down the stairs and after him, and she's so focused on the android that she doesn't even notice when the girl spots her and fires her weird red mist right at her. She feels her hands get stuck to her sides and she feels herself being pulled towards them, eventually hovering just off the ground in front of them and squirming about in an attempt to break free.

Ultron groans when she comes into his sight, "Not you again."

"Who is she?" The boy asks in a thick European accent, though Harper can't quite place where exactly it's from.

"I'm uh...well, I mean, I don't actually have like a superhero name or anything. Cause, you know, technically I'm not a superhero, but I can do all these superhero things and..." She's rambling before she even realises, and she takes a moment to compose herself before speaking again, this time in a far more serious manner,

"I'm here for the Vibranium, and I'm not leaving until you've handed it over." She tells them, voice steeled and confident.

Ultron claps his metallic hands together, the sound ringing throughout the ship, and speaks in a sarcastic tone that she didn't even know robots were capable of using, "Well done. You figured it out."

"Well, you didn't cover your tracks as well as you think." Harper quips back, having far too much confidence for someone who's being held captive in a vice-like hold, "I know what you want with the Vibranium, and I can't let you have it."

She feels the girl tighten her hold on her at that, and she winces and writhes against it more and more as she's slowly restricted even more.

"No, no, Wanda. It's alright. Let her go. She poses no threat to us." Ultron tells her, prompting Wanda to suddenly drop Harper from her hold just before her grip becomes dangerous. She lands, thankfully on her feet, but still taking a moment to regain her balance.

At least she knows that the girl has a name, and that she's taking orders from Ultron.

"What do you mean I pose no threat?" She protests once she's stable, offended slightly by the android's comment.

"What can this one do, huh?" The boy jokes, smirking over at Ultron, "She's just a child."

Harper scoffs at his offhandedness, "So are you! You've only got to be like, what, four years older than me or something?"

"She's basically a walking flashlight." Ultron muses, "She should be easy enough for you to handle."

Harper deadpans before shooting a sharp glare at the android, "Hold on a second! I saved ten hostages the other day! I for one think that I'm doing quite well for myself! You know, when you underestim-!"

She feels herself being swept off her feet by a sudden force, kinda like a shove, and she lands directly down onto the metal platform below her with a sickening thud. She groans, looking back up just in time to see the boy appear back by the girls side in a sudden blur almost invisible to the human eye.

"Cheap shot!" She gasps, wincing as she pushes herself up off of the metal, "That was a real cheap shot!"

Right, so now she knows what his deal is. Super speed and some form of telekinesis. That's what she's dealing with. That's doable, she thinks.

"Not as cheap as Stark sending a child to do his dirty work." The boy remarks coldly.

"Mr Stark didn't send me. I figured out where you were on my own, I came on my own, and I'm going to take you down on my own."

She had expected that her reply might have a more dramatic impact. Like those dramatic one liners in the movies. Even if it hadn't created the desired effect, she had at least hoped it might intimidate them somewhat.

Instead, it makes the three of them burst out laughing, much to her chagrin.

"Hey! Cut it out!" She protests when they don't stop, "I get enough of this from Mr Stark!"

Both Wanda and the boy stop instantly, with Ultron's laughter trailing off a couple of seconds later.

"I wouldn't expect anything else from someone like Stark." Wanda hisses, and Harper swears she sees her grimace at the mention of Tony's name. Her sudden shift in demeanour at the mention of Tony is surprising. What could she possibly hold against him?

"He's actually not that bad, once you get to know him." Harper tells her, shrugging.

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"What? And you do?"

"You can't even begin to understand." The boy interjects with a shake of his head, "Nobody understands."

"Well, this has been fun, but I'm afraid we're going to have to kill you now." Ultron says, and Harper instantly moves into a defensive position, her hands glowing at her sides without her even realising it.

"Aw, don't end the party now." A voice says from behind Harper, and she doesn't need to turn around to know who it is. Tony's sarcastic tone is as clear as day, "We only just got here."

"Hey, Mr Stark." Harper says, turning towards him with an awkward smile that drops as soon as she sees the stoic expression on Steve and Thor's faces beside him. She can't see Tony's face through his Iron Man suit, but she's certain that he's pulling the exact same face as them underneath it.

"So, whatcha you doing here?" She asks sheepishly, dragging out the last word awkwardly.

She's ignored completely as the mysterious Eastern-European boy addresses Tony.

"What do you think, Mr Stark? Like old times?"

"What is he talking about?" She asks, throwing yet another question into the mix.

She's ignored for the second time, which she's surprised by because she had expected to at least be yelled at by Tony by now. Maybe even scolded by Steve at the very least, but the man seems more focused on the mysterious allies of Ultron than anything else.

"You two can still walk away from this." He says, directly addressing Wanda and the boy.

"Oh, we will." Wanda says, unfazed by his comment.

"I know you've suffered."

"Wait, you know these guys?" Harper asks, even more confused now than she was before.. Steve doesn't answer her, and nobody else jumps in to do it either, "Can someone please just answer me?"

"She's annoying me. Get rid of her." Ultron orders, and Wanda obeys him without question, lifting Harper off the ground with her weird red mist once again.

"Hey! Put me down!" She yells, writhing in her hold, "Let me go!"

Wanda smirks, "Okay."

And then she's being launched through the air, now free from Wanda's grip but still feeling like she has absolutely no control. She's screaming as she's sent flying through the deep underbelly of the ship, and she's so panicked that she can't even focus on either flying or teleporting to safety. She's getting closer and closer to the ground, and it gets to the point where she's so close that she braces herself for a crash.

Except she doesn't.

She's caught at the last second, Thor flying down those last few feet between himself and the ground with her in his arms, settling her down gently and stepping back for a moment to give her time to stop hyperventilating.

"Thor?" She murmurs once she's calmed down, looking up at the God in surprise and gratitude, "Th-thank you, Thor."

"Don't thank me yet. We're not done he-."

He stops abruptly when shots suddenly beginning firing above them, alerting both of them instantly.

"We'll talk about this later. Stay hidden." He tells her. He flies up towards the sound of the shots, his red cape flapping around as he goes.

Harper stands there, unsure of what to do, and it's not until she hears gunshots fire right behind her that she's forced to actually do something.

She ducks for cover, taking shelter behind a collection of missiles presumably ready to be shipped out to their buyers. The bullets clang against the sides of the weapons, and Harper flinches every time despite her knowing that they're coming.

She figures that they must be some of Klaue's associates (unless, of course, Ultron's learnt how to fire a gun, but she highly doubts that to be the case). She considers fighting back - by the rate of the gunshots, she figures that they're can't be more than four people firing at her, and she's taken down four armed enemies before - but then one of the bullets flies so close to her head that she hears it whizz past her.

So she listens to Thor, teleporting to a quiet corner of the ship and tucking herself behind a bunch of crates that she only assumed are filled with weapons and stays there as all hell breaks loose around her.

She flinches with every shot and bang, and she still doesn't relax even when the sounds stop. If anything, the lack of noise is more terrifying.

She emerges from her hiding place, cautiously and quietly walking through the ship in the hopes that she runs into at least one of The Avengers. She passes a couple of bodies as she's walking through, and she jumps at the sight of the first, but they eventually all blend into one.

Thankfully, most of them just seem to be unconscious, but it's not like she's spending much time observing them all individually. She keeps moving onwards and upwards through the ship, and it takes a while before she actually runs into anyone.

"Clint?"

She turns the corner and finds the archer kneeling down beside Natasha. The woman's eyes are distant, her face haunted and she's so unlike her usual confident self that it's frightening. He turns towards her briefly, his face showing both panic and relief, before looking straight back to Natasha and holding the side of her face in his hands.

"What happened?" Harper asks, carefully approaching the two of them and kneeling down at Natasha's other side, still being careful to keep her distance from her.

"The girl did something to her." Clint grunts, eyes still fixed on Natasha, "Some kind of mind control."

"Mind control? Is that what that red misty stuff's for?"

Clint turns to her, deadpanning, "What?"

"Didn't you see? She threw me across the ro...that's not important right now." She trails off when she notices that he's clearly lost interest.

"What about the guys with the guns?" She asks, thinking back to the bodies she saw.

"We dealt with them all, and the robots, too."

"Robots? There were more robots?" She asks rhetorically, her voice slipping into a murmur as she thinks out loud, "I thought that's what he wanted the Vibranium for."

She's both frustrated and terrified that she's right about this.

Clint brings his hand up to his earpiece suddenly, talking to who Harper presumes is Tony, Steve or Thor. She hasn't seen Bruce yet though, so it could be him.

"That's not gonna happen. Not for a while. The whole team is down. You got no backup here."

He pulls his hand back and draws his attention back to Natasha, pulling one of her arms over his shoulder and looking expectantly over at Harper. She jumps up to assist him, which isn't easy considering her height difference, but she makes do by looping an arm around Natasha's waist and supporting her that way.

"Who was that?" She asks as they begin to walk.

"Tony." Clint says, "There's a Hulk situation."

"A Hulk situation? W-we need to go and help him!" She exclaims.

She may not have seen The Hulk in the flesh yet, but she's heard stories and seen footage. If The Hulk were here, they'd know about it, meaning that he's somewhere outside Salvage Yard. If he gets near the public, who knows what kind of chaos that'll bring. There's no way that Tony can deal with that on his own, Iron Man or not. Nobody can deal with that on their own.

"Listen, kid." Clint says, stopping and turning to her with nothing but sincerity, "I need you to help me get Nat and the others back to the jet. Can you do that?"

She's taken aback by the tone of his voice. It doesn't sound like a request. It's more like a plea. A plea sneakily disguised by a steeled voice and stern demeanour, but a plea nonetheless. It's a tone she's never heard Clint use before, and it's so unlike him that it's frightening.

So she listens to him and helps him lead Natasha through the ship to find Thor and Steve, and she doesn't mention going after Tony or anyone else at all after that.


	10. 10

The Quinjet is silent, save for Tony murmuring on a video call with Hill in the corner of the jet. Everyone's sat away from each other, with Bruce and Natasha seemingly the worst out of the group. It turns out that both Thor and Steve were controlled by Wanda, who made them have visions that they both chose not to disclose the details of.

No one pressured them to answer. How could they?

Natasha hasn't said a thing since Harper and Clint found her, and she's still got that same haunted look in her eyes as before.

Bruce looks the worst physically. He's huddled up in the middle of the jet, leaning up against the back of the seats with a blanket wrapped tightly around him. Tony apparently managed to stop The Hulk's rampage, but not before the behemoth caused a significant amount of damage in Johannesburg. People there - or anywhere, really - aren't exactly the biggest fans of The Hulk right now.

Clint's up front, piloting the jet as he has been since they left South Africa. He hasn't said much, mostly keeping his focus on where he's flying to, which is something that Harper doesn't actually know but doesn't dare to question. She's sure that now's not the time for unnecessary questions.

What she is certain of is that she owes Tony an apology. Her intentions may have been right, but the way she went about it was all wrong. Today's made her realise that.

It's only a shame that she didn't realise it sooner.

"So, run and hide?"

She listens in to Tony's conversation with Hill as she begins to approach him from across the jet, passing by a dazed Steve, Bruce and Natasha as she goes. Thor's pacing on the other side of the jet, and it's clear as day that something's on his mind, but she doesn't feel like it's her place to ask.

"Until we can find Ultron, I don't have a lot else to offer." Hill replies, sighing.

"Neither do we." Tony says before the call cuts off, enveloping the jet in silence once again.

He sighs tiredly, reclining back on his chair as the computer screen fades to black, and Harper makes a decision to approach him then and there to apologise. She feels like it's an apology that's long overdue.

"Mr Stark, can I talk to you?" She asks cautiously.

"Not now." He grumbles, shifting his in his chair to put more of his back towards her. To try and block her out.

She should probably stop. He's clearly frustrated, perhaps more so than she's ever seen him, but she really wants to apologise to him. She owes him that, at least.

"But, Mr Stark I-."

He snaps at that, jumping out of his chair and turning to her with nothing but pure rage in his eyes, pointing an accusatory finger at her as he rants, "What do you not understand by 'not now'? What do you not understand by 'an adult problem'? You could've died today."

"Any of us could've." She murmurs weakly back.

"No! You be quiet!" He snaps, and the tone of his voice is so strong and shocking that she stumbles back slightly. He notices and lowers his tone again, though it's no less enraged, "You didn't listen to me, and look what happened."

"I was trying to help, Mr Stark! I wanted to get the scepter back like you guys wanted!" She explains, exasperated.

It frustrates her that he doesn't understand. All she wants is for him to understand. She understands that what she did perhaps wasn't the greatest thing she could've done, so why can't he understand her intentions?

"So that makes it okay for you to run off to South Africa?" He questions.

"I didn't ask for anyone to come and save me! I was doing fine on my own!"

Perhaps that's a lie. Who knows if she could've fought Ultron off on her own? She probably couldn't have, but she's said it now and she can't retract it.

"We didn't come there for you! I thought you might actually be following orders and staying in your room like I told you to! We didn't even know you were there!" He shouts back, voice raised again, and it's not the anger in it this time that scares her. It's the disappointment. "And you wouldn't even be here if we arrived just a couple of minutes later."

"I'll have you know that I was handling the situation very we-!" She protests, even though the voice in the back of her head is telling her that what she's saying is a lie.

"Don't lie to me, kid."

His tone is simple and clear, and it comes across as less of an order and more as a request than anything. It's the kind of tone that makes an uncomfortable guilty feeling build in the pit of her stomach without her even saying anything.

"I-I listened!" She stammers, and it's clear that she's fighting a losing battle by now, but she goes with her gut and keeps arguing anyway, "I hid myself like Thor told me to!"

Tony looks surprised at her comment. Offended, even.

"Oh, so you'll listen to him but not to me?" He asks with a gesture to Thor, and of course the God doesn't even notice because he's pacing and is trapped in his own thoughts like the rest of the team.

This time, there's no Natasha to step in and warn Tony before he says anything irrational. There's no Steve or Bruce to act as the middle ground. She doubts that any of them are even aware of what's going on.

"Yes, because he doesn't mock me or act condescending towards me like you do!" She protests, unconsciously deciding to air out more of her issues with Tony then and there.

She respects him - of course she does, he's Tony Stark - but she feels as if he doesn't respect her. That's all she truly wants: his respect.

"I treat you like a child, because like it or not, that's what you are." He retorts, and a look of realisation suddenly crosses his face that makes his tone drop again.

"God, I sound like my Dad." He murmurs, voice so low that she doubts she would've heard him if the jet wasn't so quiet.

What he says catches her off guard. He sounds like his Dad, and he's only doing what her parents can't do anymore because they're...he's filling that void. He's acting no different to how her parents would've reacted to something like this - well, they would've mocked her less than he does, but that's besides the point.

"I just wanted to help." She sighs, the argumentative tone in her voice now gone and replacing with a far calmer one.

She doesn't need or want to argue anymore. She gets it now.

"Get some rest." He tells her simply and she nods silently back, making her way across to the other side of the jet and nestling down in a corner away from the others.

She tries to sleep, she really does, but she's too restless and every time she even begins to settle down she's made restless again by the constant sound of Thor pacing against the metallic flooring of the jet. She's certain that if she does sleep, the nightmares are gonna come back as strong as ever. What happened at Salvage Yard gave her subconscious plenty more material to conjure up more twisted dreams with.

So she doesn't sleep, but she keeps to herself and remains in her corner for the duration of the flight. She occasionally makes eye contact with Thor, who looks at her with concern for a moment each time before slipping back into his thoughts. Sometimes she smiles tiredly back at him, but he only seems to look more concerned when she does that so she eventually stops.

An unknown amount of time passes - perhaps a couple of hours, but she can't be sure - before they're finally landing, and Harper can't tell where they are because she's nowhere near a window, but she can see the light streaming through the windows at the front of the jet.

Clint takes the lead, helping Natasha up and assisting her out of the jet, with Tony following close behind. Harper stands right at the back of the group along with Bruce, murmuring quietly to the man as they approach a house at the end of a dirt path they're heading down.

"Are you okay?" She asks, receiving a weak and shaky nod back from the man in response. It's not a proper answer, but she doubts she'll get anything else out of the man right now, so she simply places a hand on his shoulder and gives it a reassuring squeeze before slipping back into silence again.

"What is this place?" Thor asks as they step onto the threshold of the house, voicing the question that most of them have on their minds.

The house is surrounding by rolling fields. A relatively large barn is there to accompany it, but other than that it's fully isolated from any and all other buildings or signs of civilisation. It's one of the most isolated places that she's ever seen, and from a first glance there doesn't seem to be anybody around.

Tony shrugs, "Safe house."

"Let's hope." Clint replies, reaching to open the door and pushing it open when he finds it to be unlocked.

They head inside, Clint tentatively announcing his arrival upon walking inside. Harper and Bruce turn the corner last, but they're just in time to see Clint embrace a woman that neither of them recognise.

"This is an agent of some kind." Tony murmurs to the group, clearly just as surprised at the sight of this mystery woman as the rest of them.

Clint smiles at the woman before turning to the group, formally introducing her to them all, "Everyone, this is Laura."

"I know all of your names." Laura says, smiling politely at them all.

They smile awkwardly back, and the room's silent until the sound of stomping feet breaks it. A smile crosses Clint's face at the sound, and it only grows when two children, one girl and a boy who looks a few years her senior, rush into the room and run straight towards him.

"Dad!" The little girl exclaims excitedly, jumping up into Clint's arms and hugging him tightly as the boy wraps his arms around Clint's waist.

"Hi, sweetheart! Hey, buddy!" Clint greets them, his voice both soft and excited, and Harper swears she's never seem him wear a smile so wide as it is right now.

Wait, Clint has kids?

"Did you bring Auntie Nat?" The girl (she should say Clint's daughter) asks once Clint sets her back down on the wooded floor.

Natasha's face perks up at the sound of her name, and it's as if there's a new lease of life in the woman as she moves into the girl's line of sight, opening her arms up for the girl to run into her embrace. The girl jumps up into her arms and hugs her tightly, and Harper's surprised when she sees Natasha hug her back.

She's seeing whole new sides to both Clint and Natasha that she never even knew existed.

"Sorry for barging in on you." Steve says, instinctively apologising on behalf of them all.

Tony's approach, unsurprisingly, is slightly different.

"Yeah, we would've called ahead, but we were busy having no idea that you existed." He quips.

"Yeah, well, Fury helped me set this up when I joined. He kept it off S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files. I'd like to keep it that way. I figure it's a good place to lay low." Clint explains.

Harper gets what he's saying. She doubts that the family of an Avenger is exactly safe from their enemies. They'd be a target if they were known of, so keeping them off of S.H.I.E.L.D's files ensure that they'll be safe. Plus, if nobody knows about their existence, then their house is the perfect safe house.

Sighing, half out of relief and half out of exhaustion, she looks to Thor, who's chosen to remain uncharacteristically quiet since they got here. He still looks as dazed as he did back on the jet, so she's surprised when he suddenly turns and steps right out of the front door of the house.

"Thor?" She calls, following him out, and he stops when he hears her, "Where are you going?"

"I saw something in that dream." He tells her, gripping his hammer tightly in his hand, "I need answers. I won't find them here."

"I can come with you." She rushes out when she notices him preparing to leave, and he looks at her incredulously for her suggestion.

"I know, but I want to help." She says when she notices his face, sighing.

"I need to do this alone." He says after a moment of thought, and it's clear from his face that he's conflicted. He steps forward, placing a strong hand on her shoulder and looking at her sincerely, "I need you to remain here where it is safe."

It's a simple request, but there's a certain level of care within it that makes Harper completely disregard her attempt to go along with Thor. Thor surprises her, because considering the fact that he's a God, he's caring and kind and he reminds her a lot of her Dad (well, minus all the superhero stuff). The caring tone in his voice is enough to make her back down.

"I don't think Mr Stark wants me around." She murmurs under her breath.

Besides wanting to help, the other reason she wants to go with Thor is because she feels like he's the only Avenger that likes her. Sure, Steve and Bruce are nice to her, but she feels like she's a burden to them, and Natasha and Clint are kinda hard to read, and of course Tony isn't exactly the most pleased with her at the minute.

"Don't you worry about Stark." He tells her, squeezing her shoulder once more before stepping back, "You focus on looking after yourself for the time being, okay? Stay safe."

She nods, and then he's swinging his hammer before flying up high into the sky and out of sight, and she keeps her eyes fixed on him until he's no longer in sight, leaving her stood alone outside the house.


	11. 11

Harper catches the baseball as Cooper tosses it at her, surprised by the force of his throw. She figures that he must have a lot of time to practice - what with being so far out from everything else. What else can you really do in such a recluse location? Go outside, watch a bit of television, read. That seems like the standard agenda for most kids his age. When she was his age, that's pretty much all she did, anyway.

It's been a relatively long day for them all. They arrived quite early in the morning, and since then they've all kinda just walked around the house aimlessly. The last time she saw Tony and Steve, they were chopping up wood logs outside the front of the house. She figures they're trying to repay Laura in some way considering that they just showed up at her house. She hasn't seen much of Natasha or Bruce, though the former did seem to have a bit more life in her when she briefly ran into her in the kitchen at around lunch time.

Both Cooper and Lila wanted to go outside and play, and of course Harper agreed because she has nothing else to do and she noticed how excited the both of them got when she agreed to. Cooper wanted to play a full game of baseball, but of course they haven't got enough for a full team, so he just opted to playing catch instead.

Lila ran around the corner to go and climb up the large tree outside the house, and Harper asked her repeatedly if her parents would be okay with that, and of course she said that they would be. She had considered going to ask Laura or Clint, but Lila seemed dead set on the idea by that point, so she simply advised her to be careful before going to play catch with Cooper.

"So you can teleport and you can fly?" Cooper asks, catching the ball as she tosses it back at him gently.

"That's right."

"That's awesome How do you do it?!" He exclaims, giddy at the revelation, which surprises her. His Dad does work with a God, after all.

She catches the ball as he tosses it back again and shrugs, "With the teleporting, I sorta just think about where I wanna go. It doesn't always work though."

"Doesn't it?"

"Yesterday, I ended up in the water on the coast of Brazil when I was aiming for South Africa." She chuckles, throwing the ball back, "My aim is sometimes a little bit off."

He laughs himself, though it's less at her and more with her than anything, and catches it again, "What about the flying? How does that work?"

"I concentrate, my hands start to glow, and then I fly. It's _a lot_ simpler than the teleportation, believe me."

He nods, and a few moments pass before he asks his next question, which comes out as far more hesitant than the previous ones.

"So, are you a new Avenger, then?"

She had a feeling that he might ask that, and of course the answer is 'no', but she wishes it wasn't. She has these abilities, and she's not allowed to use them to help people because Mr Stark claims that it's 'adult stuff', and of course he's right but it doesn't make her want to help any less. If she was an Avenger, she could help people. She could stop Ultron and she could help keep the peace.

"No." She admits after a moment, and she's trying so hard not to sound disappointed but it slips through the cracks, "No, I'm not."

"But you're a superhero." Cooper says, and his voice sounds confused and full of the curiosity that all children, Harper included, often have.

"I'm really not, Cooper." She replies, catching the ball and looking down at it as she moves it about in her hands, "Your Dad, your Auntie Nat, Steve, Tony, Mr Stark, and even Bruce...they're all superheroes. I'm not."

"But you have superpowers."

"Just because you can do super things, it doesn't make you a superhero." She says truthfully.

Before she met The Avengers, she would've made the same assumption as Cooper. All the mistakes and irrational decisions that she's made has made her realise that she's not cut out to be a superhero, at least not now. She's too young and naive to take on such a responsibility.

"So, what else can you do?"

"Well, I can-." Harper begins, grateful that the Cooper's moving the conversation along, but she stops abruptly when she hears a sudden scream coming from nearby. She drops the baseball and makes a rush towards the screams, Cooper trailing behind her.

They find Lila, huddled underneath a tree clutching her ankle tightly and sobbing. She rushes towards her, kneeling down by her side and checking her over as best she can upon a first glance. She looks back to Cooper, the boy's face pale and panicked.

"Cooper?" She says, and it takes him a moment before he makes eye contact with her, "Cooper, can you go and get your Mom or Dad for me? Can you do that?"

He nods, stumbling back towards the house a couple of seconds later and leaving her alone with a still sobbing Lila.

"Hey. It's okay." She soothes, looking back to Lila and trying not to wince at the sight of her bawling, "What's wrong? What happened?"

"I-I fell!" She wails, still clutching her ankle tightly, "I-it hurts!"

Harper panics for a moment, but after quickly assessing the height of the tree and the softness of the ground, she concludes that the worst the girl could've done was bruise or sprain her ankle.

"Okay. That's okay." Harper murmurs, tentatively reaching a hand out towards Lila's ankle, "Do you mind if I take a look at it?"

Lila's initially hesitant, but she pulls her hands away after a few moments, exposing her ankle to Harper. There's no visible cuts, so Harper suspects it to be a sprain.

"Lila, is it okay if I touch it?" She asks, because she knows that she can make at least the pain go away if she does. She doesn't hesitate to when Lila nods in confirmation, reaching out and placing her hands over the girl's ankle and feeling the pain transfer over to her just seconds later.

"Holy shit, that stings!" She hisses involuntarily when the pain really sets in, her hands coming to cover up her own ankle despite there obviously being no injury. It's a sting of pain, but it's nothing unbearable for her to deal with. That's probably due in part to her enhanced condition though.

"Holy shit?"

Her eyes widen, the pain forgotten as she exclaims frantically at the younger girl, "No! No, no, no! Don't say that! We're not allowed to say that!"

"But you just did!"

"It was an accident!" Harper replies quickly, "An accident that will never happen again, especially not in front of your Dad."

God, Clint's gonna kill her if he hears this.

"Lila?"

Speak of the devil.

Harper's almost hesitant to call out to Clint, but she ultimately does when she realises that Lila will do it anyway if she doesn't, "She's over here, Clint!"

He turns the corner, speeding up slightly when he spots Lila. He rushes to her side, kneeling down and bringing a hand up to the side of her face and speaking softly in a tone that's so unlike him that it's frightening, "What happened, sweetheart?"

"I fell, but then Harper made it all better."

Clint looks over at her skeptically before looking at Harper, clearly waiting for her to provide him with some kind of explanation.

She shrugs, "I did that healing thing. It seemed to work. Her ankle still might be sprained though cause I don't think I've cracked fully healing injuries yet. Just taking pain."

"But then she had an accident." Lila adds, and Harper turns to her with panicked and wide eyes, silently trying to will the girl to stop talking.

If only she was telepathic.

"What kind of accident?" Clint asks, eyes filtering between Lila and Harper with even more skepticism than before.

"It was a word accident."

"A word accident?" Clint murmurs, turning towards Harper and looking at her sternly when he begins to come to a realisation, "What kind of word accident?"

"Holy sh-."

Harper doesn't get to hear the rest, because she's already teleported away from them by that point. She's certain that if she stayed, she wouldn't be standing for long. She reappears outside the front of the house, but at the last second she opts to make a mad dash into the barn nearby. She figures that Clint's less likely to come looking for her in there.

She rushes inside, slamming the large doors shut behind her and sighing in relief when she's certain that she's hidden. She's so focused on that fact that she doesn't even notice that she's not alone at first, only picking up on it when she hears someone clear their throat.

She turns around at the sound, seeing Mr Stark - who's looking uncharacteristically perturbed - along with a man who she doesn't recognise.

"You must be Harper." The man says, remaining in his seat upon a hay stack within the barn, "It's nice to finally meet you."

"Hi." She replies with an awkward wave, because she feels as if she's intruding on something even if she doesn't know what that 'something' is, "Sorry, who are you?"

"Nick Fury. Former director of S.H.I.E.L.D."

Former? She thinks to herself, but she doesn't voice it. She's never really gotten answers before, so she doubts that she'll get them now.

"Sorry, sir, it's just that nobody really tells me anything. It's not really my place to know a lot of these things." She says apologetically, hopelessly trying to get herself out of this awkward situation, "Listen, I was just trying to get away from Clint, so I'll just..."

"What do you think of the Maximoff twins?" He asks as she makes for the door, and her curiosity makes her stop.

"Who?"

"I thought you said she was smart." Fury says, looking at Tony incredulously, and the genius just shrugs back.

She turns back to Fury, this time posing a question of her own, "Are you talking about that Wanda girl and the guy who was with her?"

"Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Super-enhanced twins from Sokovia."

Okay, well that fills in her unknown. Now she knows what he's called and how they're related to one another. She probably wouldn't have made the connection herself.

"I think he's super fast and she's super freaky." Harper jokes, but it falls flat when Fury deadpans her. Then again, that could just be his regular expression.

"They're dangerous." She says simply, joking aside.

"What do you mean, kid?"

"Besides the fact that they're enhanced, they're united with Ultron over hatred and nothing else." She explains, eyes filtering between both Tony and Fury, both of whom seem to be listening intently, "They're doing what they're doing over their own hate."

"For what?"

"For me." Tony says.

"You'd think the platinum bastard would be grateful." Fury muses, "You were the one who made him."

Tony shrugs, "Apparently not."

"What about Ultron?" Fury asks, looking back to Harper.

She considers her answer for a moment before replying. She's given a great deal of thought to Ultron all day, and in that time she's come to realise that he's far more complex than the Maximoff's.

"There's more to him than just hatred. Sure, he hates The Avengers, but there's more to him than that." She explains, ruminating carefully on her words. Ultron's motive isn't clear, and that's what terrifies her more than anything.

His hatred for Tony is also confusing, and it's clear from the way that he was acting that he has no reservations in showing it.

"Saying that, you should have seen him when Klaue compared him to you, Mr Stark. I mean, he went livid and star-." She begins to explain, cutting off when she notices the look that Tony's giving her. She would describe it as the 'shut up' kind of look.

"Sorry, that's not important right now." She murmurs, voice trailing off as there's a knock at the door of the barn.

Laura pokes her head in through the door, smiling warmly and tentatively at the group, "I've made some food, if anyone's hungry."

Harper instantly looks to Tony, who doesn't look particularly bothered either way, but he hasn't said much at all since she came in and something distinctly seems off with him anyway. She would ask, but she feels and knows that it's not her place to.

"I could eat." Fury remarks.

* * *

Dinner was a relatively relaxed and somewhat awkward affair. The rest of The Avengers reunited with Fury, and they all seemed relatively surprised to see him, but after that everybody sorta just ate food and slipped into casual conversation. Harper's main focus throughout the meal was to try and ignore the glare that Clint was shooting at her across the table the entire time.

Once everyone was done eating, the Barton's save for Clint began to disperse, with Cooper opting to read a book in the living room whilst Lila chooses to begin drawing, occasionally excitedly showing her progress to Natasha.

Harper herself moves into the corner of the kitchen, watching in silence as Tony and casually play a game of darts. Fury begins to talk to the group about Ultron, and when he does she half expects Tony to tell her to leave, but she decides to stay when he doesn't.

"Ultron took you folks out of play to buy himself time. My contacts all say he's building something." Fury begins to explain, "The amount of vibranium he made off with, I don't think it's just one thing."

"What about Ultron himself?" Steve asks from where he's stood in the doorway.

Fury shrugs, "He's easy to track. He's everywhere. The guy is multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit. It still doesn't help us get an angle on any of his plans, though."

"Is he still going after launch codes?" Tony asks as a dart lodges itself into the board, his eyes remaining fixed on the target.

"Wait, Ultron's going after launch codes? Like nuclear launch codes?" Harper asks, eyes wide. She knew that Ultron's dangerous, but this is a whole other spectrum.

Tony turns away from the target for the first time to look at her, and the simple look he gives her is enough to make her murmur out an apology and shrink back into her corner even more.

"Yes, he is." Fury continues after a moment, "But he's not making any headway."

Tony looks to Fury, "I cracked the Pentagon's firewall in high school on a dare."

"Well, I contacted our friends at the Nexus about that."

"Nexus?" Steve asks.

"It's in Oslo, right?" Harper says, her comment slipping out without her even realising it, but Tony doesn't say anything about it so she keeps going., "It's the world internet hub. I read about it once."

Bruce nods, "Every byte of data flows through there. Fastest access on Earth."

"So, what did they say?" Clint asks, tossing another dart that lodges itself directly into the center of the board.

"He's fixated on the missiles. But the codes are constantly being changed." Fury explains.

Tony stops throwing the darts and looks to Fury for the first time, "By whom?"

"Parties unknown."

"Do we have an ally?" Natasha asks.

"Ultron's got an enemy. That's not the same thing." Fury replies, looking around the group, "Still, I'd pay folding money to know who it is."

"I might need to visit Oslo. Find our unknown." Tony suggests, and Harper almost wants to ask if she can come because Norway's one of the places she's already wanted to visit, but then she remembers the reality of the situation and how stupid of a decision that would be.

"Well, this is good times, boss, but I was kind of hoping when I saw you, you'd have more than that." Natasha remarks, and Harper can't quite figure out if she's pissed off or she's just joking.

It's still kinda hard to tell with Natasha, at least for her.

"I do. I have you." Fury replies, saying it as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere. Ears, everywhere else. You kids had all the tech you could dream up. Here we all are, back on Earth, with nothing but our wit and our will to save the world. Ultron says the Avengers are the only thing between him and his mission. And whether or not he admits it, his mission is global destruction. All this, laid in a grave." He explains, and Harper swears that you could hear a pin drop in the room as he's giving his short speech. Not one of them interrupts, and not one of them stops listening.

"So stand. Outwit the platinum bastard." He adds, signing off his speech with a less inspiring but far more hilarious statement.

Harper's determined that she likes this Fury guy.

"Steve doesn't like that kind of talk." Natasha remarks, smirking over at the man in question, who looks quizzically back at her, only making her smirk even more.

"You know what, Romanoff?"

"So, what does he want?" Fury asks, drawing the conversation back to the topic at hand.

"He keeps trying to better himself." Harper says, and she continues again when she notices that Tony's looking at her with less frustration and more curiosity than anything, "First the Legionaire, then the next body...but he doesn't like it."

"What do you mean, kid?"

"I mean it's like he wants a human body. He wants to be like you guys, but also better than you at the same time. If that makes any sense." She explains, adding the last comment on the end when she notices the looks that most of them are giving her.

Mostly confused looks, it seems.

"The kid's onto something." Tony says, and Harper can't ignore the way her excitement peaks when she hears that, "The human form is speaking, we're outmoded. But he keeps coming back to it."

"When you two programmed him to protect the human race, you amazingly failed." Natasha quips at both Bruce and Tony, the former of the two's face flushing red with embarrassment and shame for a brief moment.

"They don't need to be protected. They need to evolve." Bruce murmurs, and Harper notices that he's looking at a picture of a butterfly that Lila drew for Natasha that's been left on the dining room table, "Ultron's going to evolve."

It takes a moment, but she realises why he's looking so intently at the picture by the time Fury speaks up again, and by then it's all making sense in her head.

"How?" Fury asks.

"Has anyone been in contact with Helen Cho?"


	12. 12

"Hey, Natasha." Harper murmurs, tapping against the wooden door of the room gently with her knuckles, "Can I ask you something?"

They're heading out soon. Tony's heading to Oslo, whilst both Harper and Bruce are getting dropped off at the tower by Fury. Clint, Steve and Natasha are heading to Seoul to check on Dr Cho - well, to be more precise, to save Dr Cho from Ultron before it's too late. They know what he's after now, so at least they know where to start.

Harper held no reservations in going back to the tower when it was suggested to her. She understands that the tower's the best place she can be right now. She understands that she needs to stay out of the way of everything. She's caused enough trouble as it is.

She's hoping that she's not about to cause any more. She stands at the door, hesitant, as Natasha turns towards her, speaking simply.

"Depends on what you're asking." She replies casually.

Harper nods, taking a couple of steps into the room and waiting a couple of seconds before she cautiously asks her question, "You've been doing this for a long time, right?"

"Thanks for making me feel old." Natasha replies, and it's hard to tell whether or not she's pissed off.

"What I mean is, you've seen people like the Maximoff's before, haven't you?" Harper says, quickly attempting to justify her rather offhanded question.

"I don't think any of us have seen people like them before." Natasha remarks, and for a moment Harper expects that to be it. She nods and turns to leave, thanking Natasha with a quiet murmur, and it's only when she's at the door that she stops.

"Why are you asking me this?" Natasha suddenly asks her, and it's enough to make her stop and turn back to the woman to give an explanation.

"When you came into my room that night before you guys went to Sokovia, I was so mad at HYDRA, and for a second there I wanted to go with you because I wanted to get back at them. I was driven by my own hate in that moment, until-."

"Until I made you see sense." She interrupts, cutting Harper off in her rambling. She looks curiously at her, "What are you trying to say, Harper?"

"What if the Maximoff's are like I was, but instead of shutting down their hate, Ultron's cultivating it. What if we - I mean, you guys - could get through to them?" She explains, hastily correcting herself when she slips up as she should. Because, of course, she's not an Avenger. This isn't her job.

Natasha seems to consider her words, and for a second she almost looks intrigued by what she's suggesting, but then someone else is tapping at the door and she stops considering it to reply to them.

"We're heading out in a second." Clint says from the door, and Natasha swiftly replies by telling him that they'll be right down in just a minute.

He leaves, and then Natasha's eyes go back to her and they soften for just a second.

"You're tired." She says suddenly.

"What?"

Her eyes lose their softness as she instructs her simply, "When you get back to the Tower, go to sleep. You need to rest."

"No I don-." Harper begins to protest, but then Natasha gives her a look that makes the words die in her throat and she sighs in defeat, "Just, be careful. Thor's gone so I doubt Mr Stark will be happy if someone else on the team goes M.I.A."

This mission of theirs isn't exactly going to be safe, and she doubts that the last thing that anyone wants is to lose another member of the team. Besides, it seems like Natasha at least tolerates her, so she doesn't really want something to happen to her. She feels like Natasha is the most likely to take a big risk on a mission.

Besides, Cooper and Lila love their Auntie Nat, and it's when Natasha makes a harmless quip with a playful smirk on her face that Harper begins to understand why.

"Since when did you get so bossy?"

* * *

They're back in the tower in no time at all, what with how fast the Quinjet's can fly, and after saying goodbye to Mr Fury, both Harper and Bruce make their way inside of the tower, which is seemingly empty. Harper had expected at least someone to be here, but that seems to not be the case as they walk through the tower up to the laboratories.

"Harper, you can go up to your room, if you want." Bruce tells her as they enter the lab, and his suggestion makes her panic.

She doesn't want to be alone right now. Sure, her bed is the more ideal place to sleep, and she probably should especially given the fact that Natasha suggested it, but being alone is the last thing she wants right now. If not for the nightmares, for the fear that something might come back. Ultron's everywhere, after all.

"I don't really want to be alone." She admits, "Is it okay if I just rest here?"

Bruce seems surprised, but the kind nature in him struggles to deny such a simply request, "Yeah. Yeah, of course."

She doesn't remember falling asleep, but when she wakes up she finds that Clint's back.

Alone. Clint's come back, and he's on his own.

"Clint?" She murmurs, sitting up to face the pacing man. He looks to her, and he almost looks...concerned. She still finds it hard to read him.

He turns away from her after a moment, looking to Tony as he enters the room. It seems that they've all come back now, but that's making her wonder where Steve and Nat are even more.

"Anything on Nat?" Bruce asks, wringing his hands in a nervous manner.

"What does he mean 'anything on Nat'? Where is she?" She asks, eyes darting between the three men in a panic. She doesn't like the way this conversation is headed.

"Ultron got her just as we got the cradle back." Clint admits, "There was nothing we could do."

"But we're gonna get her back, right?" She asks, standing up now and making her way towards the three men as she feels the panic take over.

She's thinking the worst, which isn't making this any easier. Ultron held no reservations in attacking Klaue, or ordering his army of robots to attack them, so what's stopping him from doing something awful? Of course, Natasha's an Avenger and is more than capable of defending herself, but going up against a killer android on your own can't be easy.

"She's alive, kid, or Ultron would be rubbing our faces in it." Clint tells her, and it seems that he's saying it for himself as much as he is for her.

"That still doesn't answer my question."

She doesn't like this. She really doesn't like this at all.

Thor's gone, and she doesn't have a clue where Steve is, and Nat's...they're going to find her.

They have to find her.

"This is sealed tight." Clint remarks, having now moved onto the regeneration cradle that's been placed in the lab.

At least they managed to get the cradle back, but that also means they've probably made Ultron mad which, given the current situation, probably isn't what they should be doing.

"We're gonna need to access the program, break it down from within." Bruce explains as Tony asks Clint if he can contact Natasha somehow using some old-school spy techniques.

Clint nods, "There are some nets I can cast. Yeah, I'll find her."

"Shouldn't we be out there looking for her?" Harper asks, confused. She doesn't understand how they can all be so calm about this. Nat's clearly in danger and Ultron's out of his mind so surely they should be acting with a bit more urgency.

"You can't teleport around the entire world, kid. She could be anywhere." Clint reasons, and she knows that he's right but she doesn't want to accept that.

"I could still try."

The look he gives her is a cross between gratitude, stern (as per usual), and pleading. She's figured out how close Clint and Natasha are, even if she doesn't know the reason why, so she's hoping that he'll understand where she's coming from on this one.

But when he just sighs in defeat and offers her a small ghost of a smile, she knows that she hasn't won him over on this one.

He walks past her and heads downstairs, presumably off to go and try and contact Nat, leaving Harper stood in the lab with Bruce and Tony. She takes her place at the side of the room, observing the two geniuses as they begin to discuss the regeneration cradle.

"I can work on tissue degeneration if you could fry whatever operational system Cho implanted." Bruce explains, but then Tony stops him and she sees as Bruce's face pales.

"You have to trust me." Tony tells him, tone cautious, and when Bruce instantly tries to shut him down, Tony sighs and attempts a different approach.

Harper's not entirely sure what the mogul's getting at, but Bruce sure doesn't seem to be a fan of it.

"Our ally...the guy protecting the military's nuclear codes, I found him." Tony says, and then he's performing a swift flicking motion and projecting a familiar, orange hologram into the middle of the room.

Harper perks up at the sight of it.

It's J.A.R.V.I.S, and he appears to be fully functional. It's as if Ultron never even damaged him.

"Hello, Dr. Banner. Hello, Harper." J.A.R.V.I.S greets them politely, his usual accent still present.

"Ultron didn't go after J.A.R.V.I.S because he was angry. He attacked him because he was scared of what he can do." "So Jarvis went underground. Scattered, dumped his memory. But not his protocols. He didn't even know he was in there until I pieced him together." Tony explains, and Harper simply watches him, mouth agape the entire time.

Of course, she's glad to see that J.A.R.V.I.S is all fixed, but it's just a bit of a shock to the system.

"So, you want me to help you put J.A.R.V.I.S into this thing?" Bruce asks, skepticism shining through in his voice.

Harper can tell that Bruce _really_ doesn't agree with this.

"No! Of course not. I wanna help you put J.A.R.V.I.S in this thing." Tony replies, shrugging when Bruce deadpans him, "We're out of my field, here. You know bio-organics better than anyone."

"And you just assume that Jarvis's operational matrix can beat Ultron's?"

"J.A.R.V.I.S has been beating him from inside without knowing it." Tony counters, "This is the opportunity. We can create Ultron's perfect self without the homicidal glitches he thinks are his winning personality. We have to."

"I'm in a loop! I'm caught in a time loop!" Bruce groans, "This is exactly where it all went wrong!"

"Kid, what do you think?"

Harper's quickly pulled out of her silent observation when Tony turns directly to her, and she's beyond stunned that he actually wants to include her in the conversation.

"Y-you, you want my opinion?" She asks, and she's stumbling because she genuinely can't believe that he's addressing her as if she was an adult. She straightens herself out, coughing to clear her throat before addressing Mr Stark again with her honest opinion on the matter, "Well, I think that the two of you are more than capable of pulling this off, obviously because you're both geniuses and all, and-."

"No, no, no." He interjects, shaking his head dismissively, "What do you think about this Ultron 2.0?"

"I think it needs a better name." She quips playfully, and she swears she sees the ghost of a smile cross his face, but that could just be a shadow, "But you programmed J.A.R.V.I.S to assist you right? And he's been loyal to you? If you can transfer that successfully to the body, then perhaps it could work."

She doesn't know how it really ends up happening, but it's not long before she's sat by a computer in the lab, assisting in the programming of the new body for this 'Ultron 2.0' model. She's surprised that Mr Stark wanted her help, but he insisted upon it when she tried to leave so they could get on with their work in peace.

All things considered, the process seems to be coming along well. She doesn't utilise her enhanced intelligence nearly as much as she should, but now that she is she's noticing just how handy it truly is.

"I'm gonna say this once."

Well, that is until Steve arrives with the Maximoff twins and all of their work grinds to a halt. Harper turns around, looking at the man in shock as he stands alongside two people who, not even forty-eight hours ago, could've quite easily have killed her.

She'd be lying if she said that the sight isn't a bit of a shock.

"How about 'none-ce'?" Tony retorts, standing his ground, and the matter-of-fact part of Harper can't help but point out his error.

"That's not a word."

He turns to her, face incredulous, "You know, I was just starting to like you again, kid."

"Again?" She asks, surprised, "Wait, does that imply that there was a first time?"

"We're not discussing this right now. Grown-up stuff's happening."

She sighs, mumbling under her breath begrudgingly, "And there it is."

In hindsight, she should've expected that. At least she knows that Mr Stark liked her at some point.

"Shut it down!" Steve orders, and Harper swears that his voice practically reverberates around the room. He's angry, and Harper can't deny that it's frightening.

She's never seen Steve like this.

"Nope, not gonna happen." Tony replies, continuing with his work as if Steve and the others aren't even there.

'You don't know what you're doing."

"And you do?" Bruce asks, sights narrowing in on Wanda, "She's not in your head?'

Wanda, who's been shielding herself behind her taller brother, steps out into view to face Bruce, "I know you're angry."

"We're way past that. I could choke the life out of you and never change a shade."

Bruce is angry, which in her eyes can't be a good thing. She doesn't blame him after what Wanda did to him, but the last thing they need is the sudden, unexpected appearance of the Hulk right now. Besides, would he even fit inside the room? He's quite tall.

"Banner, after everything that's hap..." Steve tries to reason, but then Tony cuts over him, and Wanda cuts over him, and it just turns into one ginormous argument that results in all of them yelling at each other.

Harper stands there, eyes darting between the arguing adults and the Maximoff twins, because she's not sure if she should try and step in or if she should just wait for a conclusion.

She goes for the latter option, which comes in a form that she hadn't expected. Pietro speeds over to the cradle, unplugging it before anyone can even so much as blink, and he simply discards the pulled cable to the ground as a siren rings through the lab.

"No, no. Go on." He says, quirking his head cockily at Bruce and Tony, "You were saying?"

The cocky expression quickly leaves his face, however, when the glass floor beneath his feet shatters and he falls through to the area below, and that's when the all out pandemonium breaks out.

Steve goes right for Tony, and she sees Bruce grab Wanda before she can join in on the fight. She hears glass shattering and thumping all around her, and she sorta just stands by the cradle in shock as everyone fights one another.

What surprises her even more is the sudden and unexpected appearance of Thor. The God slides - like, literally slides - into the room and leaps up onto the malfunctioning cradle, raising his prized hammer to the sky and summoning crackling bolts of lightning to it with ease.

"Wait!" Bruce cries, but he's too late.

Thor pushes the hammer down and forces the crackling lightning into the cradle.


	13. 13

The metaphorical dust settles in the room, and for a moment Harper feels as if she's suspended in time, beyond stunned by what she's just witnessed. Whatever Thor did with that lightning, it brought something forth from that cradle.

It gave life to the body they were trying to create, and it practically went careening out of the room after Thor threw it away in an act of self defense.

So now, heading out into the living area of the tower with everyone else, she's surprised to find the red figure far calmer than before, now clad in an outfit of its own that even includes a cape.

"Thor. You helped create this?" Steve asks, skeptical eyes filtering between the God and the cradle's creation.

Well, she figures it's partially her creation, too.

"I've had a vision. A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life, and at its center is that." Thor explains, pointing at the yellow gem that's embedded deep in the androids (she supposes it technically is one) forehead.

She notices that its glow is vivid. Intriguing, even.

"What? The gem?" Bruce asks, confused.

"It's the Mind Stone. It's one of the six Infinity Stones. The greatest power in the universe, unparalleled in its destructive capabilities."

"Then why would you bring t-?" Steve begins to ask, but Thor stops him curtly.

"Because Stark is right."

"It's definitely the end times." Bruce murmurs.

Harper has to agree with him on that. Things sure aren't adding up here.

"Thor, what's going on?" She asks.

"The Avengers cannot defeat Ultron." The android answers for him, its voice sounding exact to J.A.R.V.I.S'. At least they know that they did something right in programming it, "Not alone."

"Why does your Vision sound like J.A.R.V.I.S?" Steve asks, clearly confused at the sound of the familiar voice he thought to be long gone.

Even Harper's having a bit of a double take at the sound of his voice. It's odd to hear given the circumstances, which is even stranger since she saw J.A.R.V.I.S as very much alive not long ago. The whole situation is just a bit much, if she's being perfectly honest.

"We reconfigured J.A.R.V.I.S' matrix...to create something new." Bruce explains, curiously observing the newly created android for himself as he speaks.

"I think I've had my fill of new." Steve remarks.

"You think I'm a child of Ultron." The android replies, and it's less of a question and more of a statement. It's certain of itself, that's for sure.

"You're not?"

It shakes its head, "I'm not Ultron. I am not J.A.R.V.I.S, either. I am..."

"I looked in your head and saw annihilation." Wanda says coldly, stepping out from Pietro's shadow to stare the android in the face, who seems undisturbed by her advances.

"Look again."

Clint scoffs, and Wanda shies away slightly when he dismisses her, "Her seal of approval means jack to me."

The tension is uncomfortably awkward.

Thor gestures to the Maximoff twins, who are stood in their little cluster at the side of the group, "Their powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultron himself, they all came from the Mind Stone, and they're nothing compared to what it can unleash. But with it on our side..."

"Is it?" Steve asks, sights set on the android instead of the God, "Are you? On our side?"

His questions catch Harper's attention, because they're the kind of questions that she also wants answers to. The entire situation is just a big unknown to her, and she'd be lying if she said that she's okay with that. She wants to know what's going on, even if it's not exactly her place to.

The android pauses, considering his questions for a moment before providing a simple response, "I don't think it's that simple."

"Well, it better get real simple real soon." Clint says.

"I am on the side of life. Ultron isn't. He will end it all."

She knows that's what Ultron's goal is, but actually hearing it being said out loud is beyond terrifying. She's still struggling to understand how this is all happening and how she's caught up in it.

"What's he waiting for?"

"You."

Of course he's waiting for them.

"Where?"

"Sokovia." Clint says, "He's got Nat there, too."

"Let's go then." Harper says determinedly, relieved now knowing where Nat is, "Let's go to Sokovia and kill this stupid robot and get her back."

She wants to find Ultron and end this, but the android doesn't exactly agree with her thought process.

"I don't want to kill Ultron."

"Why not? The guy's an asshole!" Harper guffaws, the curse slipping out without her even realising it. She feels everyone's eyes burning into her - even the Maximoff's are staring at her - and she shies away and mumbles a sheepish apology, "Sorry."

"Ultron's unique and he's in pain. But that pain will roll over the Earth. So, he must be destroyed. Every form he's built, every trace of his presence on the net. We have to act now. And not one of us can do it without the others. Maybe I am a monster. I don't think I'd know if I were one. I'm not what you are, and not what you intended." The android explains, and Harper's half convinced that it might be slightly delusional based on its perspective of Ultron.

Still, despite her doubts of the android, there's no denying that its trustworthy when it suddenly lifts up Thor's hammer with ease from where its been placed on the floor, passing it over to the God with ease before heading out of the room.

Everyone stares at each other in shock, and Harper swears that Thor looks as if he's seen a ghost or something, but when he finally snaps out of his suspended state of shock he walks past Tony, patting him on the back as he goes, "Right. Well done."

Still, despite what's just happened, Harper can't help thinking about one thing in particular.

"I've been trying to do that for weeks and that thing just strolls in and does it?!" She whines, and Tony even looks slightly amused at her frustration, "I wanna be worthy, too!"

Steve snaps out of his own shock soon after to take charge, informing the group that they have three minutes to gather what they need before they're heading out. They all begin to disperse, and Harper takes that as a sign for her to do the same.

She figures that she should save Mr Stark the aggravation by just going to her room now. Of course she'd love to help, but she doubts that's what anyone wants, which is why she begins to make her way for the staircase that leads up into the living quarters without another word, the sound of glass crunching beneath her feet alerting Mr Stark to her movement.

"Where are you going?" He asks.

"Up to my room." She replies, casting a glance over her shoulder, "Figured the least I could do was give you one less thing to worry about."

"Yeah, well, that is the least you can do."

She forces a smile at that. She should've expected it, but she can't deny that it stings slightly.

"Good luck in Sokovia, Mr Stark." She replies, deciding that it's best for her to just leave now before the situation can get anymore uncomfortable. Besides, she doubts that Mr Stark wants to drag out the conversation any longer than necessary.

But then he's the one who keeps it going, much to her surprise.

"Only, there is something else you can do."

She stops, turning back to fully face him confusedly, and she only just about manages to catch a small device that he suddenly tosses at her without warning. She turns it around in her hands, briefly examining the great detail that seems to be packed into it. It looks kinda like a watch, except without the face, and it's a bit bulkier than one.

"Put it on." He tells her simply, to which she responds with skepticism.

"Uh, what is it, exactly?"

"Put it on and tap it twice."

She listens the second time, fixing the strap around her right wrist securely before tapping it as instructed, and what happens next takes her by surprise in more ways than one.

She feels her entire body being covered by something. It starts from the device itself, spreading out like waves that spread out onto a shore, covering her body and clothes in a stylish mix of black and white that compliment one another perfectly. It goes all the way down to her clothes and all the way up to her neck, with black being the predominant color in the outfit.

She knows what it is.

It's her very own super suit, and its got to be the coolest thing that she's ever seen.

"Whoa! This is awesome!" She gasps, eyes practically glistening with wonder as she eyes up her new attire, "And stylish! I like the color scheme, Mr Stark!"

He shrugs nonchalantly, "Well, it's practical."

"What do you mean?"

"You can play around with it after this is over with." He says, and Harper only misses his slightly dismissive tone because she's too transfixed on her suit, "There's a mask feature built into it. You can activate it by tapping the control point three times, but I don't think you're really gonna need that anymore."

Her focus shifts from her suit for the first time when he says that, a twinge of guilt hitting her at his words that soon morphs into a growing snowball of guilt that seems to be spiralling down a never-ending hill.

"I'm sorry about that, by the way." "I don't think I ever apologised, and I know I should've sooner but with everything going on and-."

"We don't have to keep talking, kid. I get what you're trying to say." He says, though his tone isn't dismissive or harsh.

It's understanding, and she's grateful for it.

Still, there's one thing that's been stuck on her mind about all of this.

"Mr Stark, I'm not ready for this! What if I screw up?" She admits, almost shamefully, because she doesn't know if she's capable of something of this scale.

Lives are at stake here, for people that she both knows and doesn't, and the last thing she wants is to let anyone down. It's not like a game where you can just reset and start over. This is a one way ticket.

"It's your choice, kid. You've got two minutes to figure it out, so I'd start thinking about it." He tells her, and then he's leaving to go and get ready himself, and she's just stood there alone with her thoughts.

It's strange, because all she's wanted since meeting the Avengers is the opportunity to help people like they do. Mr Stark has effectively just given that opportunity to her, but she has to admit that it's difficult to make such a decision.

This grown-up business sure is difficult to work through.

"It's stylish."

She yelps, like actually yelps, at the sound of another voice, only slightly relaxing when her eyes land on Pietro at the other side of the room. He's wearing a new outfit, but she figures that she shouldn't be surprised by the sudden change because of his enhanced speed and all.

"What?" She asks, confused.

"The suit."

She still doesn't trust the Maximoff twins, but it's interesting to know that at least one of them has an eye for fashion. Doesn't exactly cancel out everything else that's happened, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Or perhaps she's just making random observations to distract herself from her decision. That's probably the case.

"Your sister isn't going to launch me out of the window or something with her red misty stuff, is she?" She asks, yet another distraction she's depending on at the minute.

Pietro shrugs, an amused smirk plastered on his face, "Probably not."

Harper grumbles in response, eyes moving towards the ground as Pietro leaves (presumably to find Wanda), and it's as she looks down that she notices a certain something on her suit that she, somehow, didn't notice before.

On her right arm, close to her shoulder and over a white section of her suit, is the Avengers logo, standing out in a striking black color for all to see.

Sure, it's only a logo, but it's also a symbol of something far bigger, and it's just what she needed to see.

No more distractions. She knows what she has to do.


	14. 14

She's walking through the dark and dingy area of Ultron's base of operations in Sokovia when she asks the question that's been playing on her mind. She's kept quiet whilst on the jet, and even when she and Bruce split up from Thor upon breaking their way into the base, but now she just has to ask it.

"Alright, so what's your game plan?"

Bruce turns to her as they walk alongside down the staircase, baffled, "What do you mean?"

"With Nat. I may be young, but I have eyes." She quips back, and she doesn't notice the way his face gains an extra tint of red, "So, have you kissed her?"

"I don't think this is-." He stammers, averting her gaze, and of course she feels bad for making him so flustered but she's genuinely curious about this.

Sure, everything's been chaotic, but she hasn't missed certain things between Nat and Bruce. She reckons that it flies under the radar most of the time, but when she does catch it, she can't help but find it adorable.

"The time to be talking about this?" She asks, finishing his sentence for him, "Trust me, if you like her, just go for it."

"And you would know?"

She shrugs, "I was homeschooled, so I was never really in the environment to have any crushes, per se, but I did watch a lot of reality TV when I was bored."

It sounds odd, but she likes to think that reality TV helped her to forge a new perspective on a lot of these things. Of course, it's not the same as actually experiencing them for yourself, but it's a close second.

Still, she doesn't miss the way Bruce sorta draws in on himself as the conversation continues on, so she decides to drop it and focus on the task at hand: finding Natasha.

Bruce begins to call out the name of the missing heroine, so Harper decides to mimic his actions to try and be helpful.

"Nat!" She calls, "Nat! Are you in here?!"

"Bruce? Harper?"

They turn the corner at the sound of her voice, both of them sighing in relief to find her in a small, decrepit cell. Well, the cell part isn't the best, but at least they've found her.

She looks relieved to see them, too. She's stood at the bars of the cell, sights focused primarily on Bruce as he too rushes up to the cell, voice laced with concern as he talks to her.

"Are you alright?"

She nods, "Yeah."

He nods back, smiling awkwardly for a moment before continuing, "The team's in the city. It's about to light up."

"Don't suppose you've seen a key lying around here or-?" Natasha asks, not too perturbed by Bruce's previous statement, as she looks around the area, and Harper takes this as her chance to jump in.

"I got it." She says, stepping forward and raising her glowing hand.

"You do?" Bruce asks, skeptical.

"Of course I do!" She replies, slightly offended that he doesn't believe in her, before looking to Nat, "Stand back."

She listens, and then Harper aims her arm at the lock on the door and blasts a hole right through it, allowing her to pull open the steel door without a hitch and free Nat from her cage.

"So, what's our play?" Natasha asks, stepping out of the cell, and Harper finds herself accidentally stumbling as she steps back to let her out, and in doing so she ends up trigging that mask functionality that Mr Stark briefly told her about.

It warps over her face just like the suit did; she's stunned by everything that appears before her eyes. Of course, she can still see Bruce and Nat, but now there's so much more. She would describe it as high-tech, but even that doesn't do it justice.

Mr Stark sure did put a lot of technology into this thing.

"Hello, Harper."

She's surprised by the sudden, unknown voice as much as she's surprised by its feminine tone and British accent. It's kinda like a female J.A.R.V.I.S, she figures.

"Guys, the mask is talking." She says, and Nat and Bruce look at her as if she's insane, so she figures that they can't hear the voice like she can. It's probably contained within the mask.

"My name is A.M.Y."

"A.M.Y?" Harper questions.

"My name stands for 'always monitoring you'."

Harper groans exasperatedly. Of course Mr Stark found a way to baby her yet again.

"Incoming call from Tony Stark." A.M.Y informs her, and Harper requests that she answer it despite still being flustered, and then Tony's face is popping up in the corner of her eye, not fully obscuring her vision but still being visible.

"Hey, Mr Stark. How did you know that I turned on the mask?" She asks.

"I get alerted when you do." He replies, and Harper has to stop herself from groaning in frustration again. "Have you found Romanoff?"

"Yeah, we found her." She replies, subconsciously looking over at her just to double check, "What should I do?"

"Now you come back and help with the evacuation." He orders.

"Alright. I'll fly right there." She says, and she goes to ask A.M.Y to hang up the call when she remembers something and stops herself, "Wait, can I take the mask off?"

Oh, if only she could take a picture of Tony's face right now. Funny doesn't even begin to cover it.

"Why?" He asks.

"I like the way the wind feels in my hair when I fly." She admits sheepishly after a moment, and when Tony deadpans her she feels her face go red.

She thought that she should ask, and she's not gonna lie and say that it doesn't feel super cool to feel the wind in her hair as she flies.

He hangs up then, and she takes that as her sign to take the mask off. She taps the control point at her wrist three times and the mask falls away, exposing her face to both Nat and Bruce, who look beyond confused.

"What's going on?" Bruce asks, perplexed.

"Mr Stark wants me to head into the city and help with the evacuation." She replies before looking to Nat, concerned, "Are you sure that you're okay? Ultron didn't hurt you, did he?"

"Of course not." She replies, looking both amused and even touched by her concern, and she's nodding to the exit, "I'd go before Tony calls you again."

Harper nods, "Good luck, you guys."

She turns around then, flying out the same way that they came in, though this time she's moving at a far faster pace than she was before, and she's got the added advantage of actually knowing where she's going this time around.

She flies into the city with the expectation that she'll be helping people leave their homes and make their way to safety and not much else. What she finds isn't quite what she was expecting.

She finds the city to be raising itself into the air, and the city itself is littered with hundreds, potentially thousands, of robots, all likely being controlled by Ultron and Ultron alone.

And that's not even the most horrifying part, because as she hovers over the rising city, triggering her mask so she can ask A.M.Y to track down one of the Avengers, the sound of Ultron's spine-tingling voice echoes through the air.

"You, Avengers, you are my meteor. My swift and terrible sword. And the earth will crack with the weight of your failure. Purge me from your computers, turn my own flesh against me. It means nothing. When the dust settles, the only thing living in this world...will be metal."

The voice goes, but Harper finds herself hovering there for a moment, afraid that it's going to come back. Is she afraid of Ultron? Not necessarily, but she knows that she's afraid of what he's capable of.

Pulling the black hood that's attached to her hood up, her sights become set on the city, "A.M.Y, locate The Avengers."

"Thor, Dr Banner and Agent Romanoff are beneath the city." The A.I informs her, and then a small locator map is popping up in the corner, "I've located Captain Rogers. I've placed a marker on the map to his precise location."

"Thanks."

She races towards the marker that's been placed on the map, landing in front of Steve just as he fights off three robots at once with only his shield and fists.

"Steve!" She shouts, rushing towards the man as she lands on the debris-covered ground, "What's going on? Why is the city flying?"

She doesn't expect Steve to have an answer for her, but she sincerely hopes that he does.

"Incoming on the bridge." Tony says over the comms system, and before she can even look back to Steve, she feels herself being swept off her feet by one of the robots.

She grunts in pain upon impact, and she's groaning even more when the robot drops her done onto the metallic hood of a car that's been left on the bridge; the suit doesn't exactly provide much protection. She might try and upgrade it to be made out of metal or something once all of this is over.

Steve helps her up right after he lodges his shield inside yet another robot, drawing it back to himself as Harper's feet touch back down on the ground. His hand comes up to his ear, and then his voice is sounding through the comms system, "Stark, you worry about bringing the city back down safely. The rest of us have one job, tear these things apart. You get hurt, hurt them back. You get killed...walk it off."

"Walk it off?" Harper guffaws, because there's no way that Steve can be serious in saying that, but when he turns to her and looks at her pointedly she realises that he is, "Right. Walk it off."

"Show me what you got, kid." He tells her, and then he's rushing off to fight off some more of the robots nearby.

She springs into action, because what else is she to do when she's being assaulted by multiple identical androids with no reservations in tearing her limb from limb. She's not physically strong like Steve or Thor, so punching at the things won't do a thing, but she's been perfecting her light projectiles, which is sure coming in handy right now.

She fires orbs at light at all of the robots that approach her, using her teleportation to manoeuvre around them when necessary, and the entire process becomes rather seamless.

Fire. Teleport out of the way. Fire twice more. Teleport again.

It all becomes a blur, the only thing that really sticks in her mind being the image of the gaping holes that in the middle of the lifeless androids after her projectiles burst right through them.

It's constant, and there's only a shift in the thrilling - and admittedly rather terrifying - routine when Thor comes to her side, having fought his way through multiple robots just to get there.

"Little person! What are you doing here?!" He asks, looking slightly frustrated at her, as he knocks another approaching android away with just his fist.

"Trying not to die!" She calls back, turning to him once she's sure that there's no robots specifically targeting her for the minute.

He's not happy with her reason. She can see it in his face in an instant.

"It's not safe! You shouldn't be here!"

Ordinarily, she would be touched by his concern. That's something that she's always greatly appreciated about Thor. He's looked out for her from the start, and despite his godlike exterior and demeanour, that all seems to crumble away when he talks to her. He talks to her as an equal, as a friend who he cares about, and she appreciates that more than he could ever know.

But right now, when the fate of the lives of millions is literally at stake, that concern may be misplaced.

"If we don't do something about Ultron, nowhere will be safe!" She shouts back over the noise of panicked screams and flying robots, and he still doesn't seem convinced.

But then Ultron swoops in out of nowhere and rips him up from the ground, carrying him off and out of sight, and as she watches him get dragged away she gets how he feels. She feels pure terror rush through her as she watches him, and his name is tearing its way out of her throat in a scream.

"Thor!"

She goes to fly after him, because that's what her first - and honestly, only - instinct is telling her to do, but as she's rising from the ground she feels a familiar force collide with her, and then she's being dropped onto yet another car, except this time she's going right through the windshield.

Another scream sounds, except this time it's one of pure pain as she feels glass shards poke into her through her suit. She reckons that quite a lot of it is being intercepted by the material, but the strength of the impact must've been enough to tear through it enough to cause some damage.

She's surprised that the android isn't following up its attack, especially considering that she's vulnerable at the minute, but when she tries to shift to look around her she feels the pain come on tenfold.

It's not completely unbearable thankfully, but it's enough to cause a sting.

"Son of a bitch!" She groans, crashing back down onto her back because she needs the pain to pass before she can try that again.

"Don't let Steve hear you say that."

She turns her head, relaxing ever so slightly at the sight of Natasha, but the woman seems far less relaxed than her. She looks worried, concerned even.

"Where are you hurt?" She asks, gripping onto her shoulder, and Harper winces ever so slightly upon contact, "Did one of those androids throw you into this thing?"

"Dropped, actually."

"Can you sit up?"

Harper nods, because she can feel the pain passing already, and Natasha assists her as she sits herself back up again. Mr Stark was right about her healing capabilities progressing.

Looking around, she notices the peculiar absence of androids, and Natasha seems to notice her confusion and fills in the blanks quickly.

"Ultron must've called them off for a minute. We dealt with all the ones nearby."

It's at the mention of the head android's name that she remembers how she got injured in the first place, and her eyes go wide in panic, "Ultron! He took Thor!" She explains, practically leaping off of the car, "I need to go and find him!"

Of course, Thor is more than capable of defending himself, but she knows that he'd be rushing to help her, and she feels that she should be doing the same.

"We need you here. The next wave could hit any minute." Natasha tells her, and Harper can tell in an instant that there's gonna be no reasoning or arguing with the woman.

"What have you got, Stark?" Steve asks, his voice sounding through the comms system and catching both Harper and Nat's attention.

She hasn't heard from Clint once, or Bruce, or the Maximoff twins, which isn't exactly doing much for the rising panic that she can feel settling in her bones. But, at least she knows that some of the team are okay.

Tony sighs, "Nothing great. Maybe a way to blow up the city. That'll keep it from impacting the surface, if you guys can get clear."

"I asked for a solution, not an escape plan."

"Impact radius is getting bigger every second. We're gonna have to make a choice."

Harper's beyond stunned that he's considering blowing up the city as an option. Surely there has to be another option?

"I don't mean to step over the line or anything, Mr Stark, but blowing up the city probably isn't the best idea." She says tentatively, because she subconsciously knows that she shouldn't be saying anything, but she can't help it.

She's surprised when he actually considers what she's saying.

"If you've got any suggestions, kid, then I'm open to hearing them." He replies, and she's grateful for the opportunity to voice her ideas for once.

Only now, when she's actually been given the opportunity to do so, she's got nothing.

"Can I get back to you on that one?" She replies sheepishly before jumping off of the comms system, and then she's looking towards Nat pleadingly, "Nat, we can't leave all of these civilians on here."

That's her main concern right now. Sure, she can teleport away, but the civilians sure can't. She could try teleporting them to safety, but she doesn't even know if she's capable of that and there's no way that she could get them all away in time.

She hopes Nat will understand where she's coming from.

"I'm not suggesting that we leave." She replies, and it takes Harper a moment for her to figure out what she's implying with that. Nat simply shrugs, looking out into the clouds that they're hovering at the level of, "There's worse ways to go. Where else am I gonna get a view like this?"

Harper can't deny that the view they've got is stunning. Sure, she can fly, but she's never been this high up before. It's quite beautiful, actually, and feeling the wind blowing around them makes it all the more real.

It's truly a sight that she never thought she'd see.

"Glad you like the view, Romanoff. It's about to get better."

She only just about registers the voice that's coming through the comms system as a large airship comes into sight, emerging from the clouds and stunning her with its scale. It's Nick Fury, and he's arrived at just the right time.

"Nice, right? Pulled her out of mothballs with a couple of old friends. She's dusty, but she'll do." He comments, and Harper's still dumbfounded by the size of the aircraft, and Natasha just seems surprised that it's actually here.

Talk about perfect timing, especially considering that the airship is beginning to deploy lifeboats which will be perfect for evacuating the civilians.

"Romanoff! Harper!" Steve calls, rushing towards the two of them, shield now clipped to his back, "Help me load up the lifeboats."

Both of them agree to his request, rushing over to the panicked civilians to aid them in getting onto the docking lifeboats. It's frantic, and they're all rushing towards the lifeboats out of fear, and Harper doesn't exactly blame them.

She's not invincible. She reckons that a bullet to the head or a great enough fall will be enough to finish her off, but she's at an advantage compared to the people of Sokovia. She can take a bullet, or crashing down onto a car from a height, but they can't. They need to get out of here.

They're loading them onto the boats for a while, and it seems that they're making a fair amount of progress on their task, when Mr Stark's voice sounds over the comms system.

"Thor, I got a plan."

Harper's initially relieved, but then the God's reply knocks that away.

"We're out of time. They're coming for the core." He replies, and by the tone of his voice she can tell that he's fighting someone or something off.

Still, Harper's heard enough. She knows what's important now - getting to the core. She doesn't exactly know what's so important about it, but she's going to protect it if it means something.

Tapping her control panel to activate her mask, she flies up into the sky as it covers her face, speaking when all of the technology that's been built into the mask appears in front of her face.

"A.M.Y, where's the core located?"

"Scanning." She replies, and then she's giving her a concrete answer moments later, "The center of the city. Inside the church."

She nods, choosing instead to teleport to the church rather than fly to get there just a bit sooner. She materialises inside, opting to keep the mask on as she appears at Thor's side, and the God is the first to notice her arrival.

"Are you okay?" She asks, because the last time she saw him he was being dragged away by Ultron, and he looks battered and bruised, but she can't tell if that's from Ultron or just from fighting in general.

He nods, gesturing to the space at his side with his hammer in hand, "Stay close, Harper."

She nods back and sticks to his side, because she can see it in his face that he's not just making that request nonsensically. There's a reason behind it.

The others begin to flood into the church, with Natasha arriving in the most interesting way - being in a truck. She jumps out and rushes over to the group, looking at Mr Stark questioningly, "What's the drill?"

"This is the drill." He replies, pointing to the metal core in the middle of the church, "If Ultron gets a hand on the core, we lose."

The Hulk completes the group by bursting into the church, ripping apart multiple androids on his way in, and Ultron comes into their sight finally, hovering over the group just outside of the church.

"Is that the best you can do?!" Thor yells, and Harper can't believe that he's taunting the maniacal android, but she figures that being a God makes you less afraid of such a risk.

All she knows is that she's absolutely terrified when Ultron summons yet another legion of androids within seconds, and her eyes remain fixed on the metallic army even as Steve makes a rare - albeit humorous - quip at her side.

"You had to ask."

"This is the best I can do." Ultron says, gesturing to his army proudly, "This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me. How can you possibly hope to stop me?"

"Well, like the old man said...together."

It kicks off after Tony's statement, and it's perhaps the most chaotic and frightening and oddly awesome thing she's ever experienced. She's fighting harder than she ever has before, and everything around her is kinda just a blur; a mixture of sounds and explosions that all seem identical to one another.

She's conscious of when Ultron rushes into the church, and it seems that the others are dealing with it just fine. They manage to clear out the other androids in due time, and she feels Thor place a hand on her shoulder briefly before he follows Mr Stark and the Vision (the name they've given Ultron's creation) out of the church, chasing down Ultron as he remains on his own.

As they're clearing the last of the robots out, she's aware of Natasha coming to her side. She looks to be relatively unharmed, though she can tell by the look she's giving her that she's not concerned about herself.

"You okay?" She asks, breathless.

Harper nods, because thankfully she wasn't harmed too badly by the androids onslaught, and even if she was she's certain that she could heal it if she concentrated enough. She's grateful that she cares - that all of them care.

"We gotta move out. Even I can tell the air is getting thin." Steve says, briefly glancing behind to check if anymore androids are incoming, which they thankfully aren't, before turning back to them, "You guys get to the boats. I'll sweep for stragglers."

"What about the core?" Natasha asks, and it's a valid question, because they simply can't risk leaving it unattended just in case one of the android's comes back.

"I'll protect it." Wanda says suddenly, and they're all surprised by her willingness to take on such a daunting task, but she seems to hold no reservations in doing so, "It's my job."

It's their collective job, technically speaking, but the Sokovian seems to feel even more responsible for it, which seems to be enough to convince Clint to follow Steve's instruction.

"Harper, are you coming with us?" He asks as Nat comes to his side. It makes sense that the two of them are going to head out together - it's not like they can fly or teleport or run super fast like the rest of them.

She agrees to his offer, however, because she can feel the exhaustion beginning to set in, and the thought of flying or teleporting at this moment in time isn't the most prevalent in her mind. She chooses to instead follow the two adults out to a nearby car, jumping into the back seat as Clint takes the wheel with Natasha at his side.

She listens to the two of them as they drive through the ruined city, surprised by just how casual the topic of their conversation is in a time such as this. Then again, she figures that they've dealt with this kind of thing before, so they're going to be far better at handling it than her.

Because despite not being in any imminent danger at this moment in time, her head's still spinning and her heart's still pounding.

They pull up by the lifeboats, and the sound of The Hulk's booming roar snaps her out of her suspended state of limbo, and her frantic eyes instantly go to Natasha who notices her gaze.

"Get on a boat." She tells her, unbuckling her seat belt and jumping out of the car before Harper can argue.

Harper looks at Clint, who shrugs and gets out of the car himself, "You heard her."

She nods back absentmindedly, getting out of the car and beginning to walk towards the nearest lifeboat, but when she gets halfway there she finds herself looking back to where Natasha's rushing off to. She can't explain why, but she feels her gut twist painfully at the sight.

Something feels wrong about this.

But then, before she can ask A.M.Y to maybe scan the area, because perhaps her paranoia is stemming from the fear that one of the android's might appear out of nowhere and go on yet another attack, she finds herself unable to say anything.

She knows what's happening before it does, but then there's nothing.

Lights out.


	15. 15

There's beeping. It's kinda like an alarm clock, though it's less incessant, but she still wants it to stop because it's annoying and it's disrupting her sleep.

Except she wasn't exactly sleeping, because she passed out for reasons unknown to her at the time. Her suit's gone, and so are the clothes she had on underneath, having been replaced by clothes in a similar fashion to her pyjamas. They're a far more comfortable choice, but all they're really doing besides that is adding to her confusion.

She turns her head to the side, craning her stiff neck to look around, and her eyes land on a familiar figure stood at a desk at the side of the room.

"Dr Cho?" She murmurs, voice raspy from lack of use, and the doctor turns to her after hearing her name, tentatively approaching her with a smile.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've felt worse, I guess." Harper muses, and then she's looking around as much as her position will allow, "Are we in the Tower?"

"That's correct."

"How did we get here?"

She's only just starting her expansive list of questions, and she's afraid that they might be here for a while trying to get through it all.

Dr Cho pauses for a moment, clearly considering her words, before continuing, "What's the last thing that you remember?"

"Nat told me to get on a lifeboat, and I went to get on it, but I stopped because I saw her with The Hulk and...I felt like something bad was about to happen."

Dr Cho sighs, "You passed out, Harper. Miss Romanoff said that you were dropped on a car, is that right?"

"Yeah. One of those stupid robots dropped me onto it." She replies, and it's then that she makes an effort to sit up, one that's surprisingly easy, "I was fine though."

"The glass that got into your shoulder caused you some severe bleeding. Your suit stopped a lot of it, but it caught up with you eventually." She explains, "I believe Tony's fixing the suit."

At the mention of Mr Stark's name, combined with Nat's, quickly refocuses Harper's attention, "How is Mr Stark? And everyone else? Did they all get out okay?"

Dr Cho pauses then, a grimace crossing her face, and Harper feels her panic escalate to the point where the beeping speeds up tenfold.

"The Maximoff boy...he didn't make it."

The beeping doesn't change when she hears that, because she begins worrying for a whole other reason entirely. She wasn't close to him, so she's not going to pretend that she was, but Wanda was. She's lost a brother, and even if she's not friends with the girl, she feels for her.

He didn't deserve to die, no matter what he did.

She turns at the sound of the door sliding open, surprised when Mr Stark steps through with a brown paper bag in hand and nothing else. He looks to Dr Cho first, who nods respectfully before making her way out of the room, and he turns to her, standing where the doctor was stood prior.

"Hey, kid. I brought you something." He says simply, dropping the paper bag on her lap.

She looks at him quizzically for a moment but, in true Mr Stark fashion, just leans back against a nearby wall with his arms crossed in a relaxed position. She peers into the bag, reaching inside and pulling out the item, which only adds to her confusion.

"A cheeseburger?"

She appreciates it, but it's kinda unorthodox.

"Thank you, Mr Stark." She murmurs, placing the gift back in its bag to save it for later.

She's really not that hungry, so she might as well save it for when she is.

A moment passes, and it's silent because Harper doesn't know what else to say and it seems that he doesn't either. But then he just blurts it out and it surprises her.

"So, Sokovia's gone." He says, and she's less surprised by what he's saying and more surprised about how abrupt he's saying it.

It's better to just rip the band aid off, she figures.

"And Pietro." Harper murmurs, and she doesn't miss the way that Mr Stark straightens up ever so slightly. Sighing, she asks, "How's Wanda?"

"As good as you'd expect." He replies, shrugging, "Thor was not happy to find out that you wound up like this. Neither was Cap, or Romanoff, or even Barton."

She's appreciative of their concern, and also slightly guilty for putting them through that, but she can't help but notice that one person's missing from that list.

"What about Bruce?"

A beat passes, and then he's sighing before saying it aloud.

"Banner's gone M.I.A. The big green guy took off in a ship." He explains, "It's masked with the stealth tech that I developed, so we can't track it."

She feels it in her chest first. It's a sinking feeling, one of loss and regret and sadness. She hasn't known Bruce for long, but he's always been kind to her and he's never once judged her. He's never yelled at her, or even really gotten mad at her, and he's never gotten bothered when she's pestered him whilst he's been working in the lab.

And the fact that he's gone (maybe not like Pietro is but that doesn't make it any better) hurts more than fighting against those robots did, or even getting shot.

"Do you think he'll ever come back?" She asks tentatively, voice cracking slightly despite herself, and when she doesn't get a response she knows that she shouldn't press the matter any further. She chooses instead to change the topic of conversation slightly, "Thanks for the suit, Mr Stark. I'm sorry that I trashed it."

"It's already fixed." He replies, shrugging again and standing up from his position against the wall to face her properly, "Besides, you might as well get used to using it."

"Why'd you say that?" Harper asks, confused, and the way that he rolls his eyes both amuses and alarms her.

"What did I say about using your brain?" He says, scoffing, and he almost looks frustrated but then he pulls it back rather suddenly. Stepping forward, he places his palm against either of her shoulders once in almost a mock knighthood action, "Congrats, kid. You're an Avenger now."

She almost does a double take then and there, and she has to say the words in her head a couple of times before it settles in, and even then she's still struggling to comprehend it.

"Wait, what?" She fumbles, because there's no way that he could've just told her that.

She's...well, she's just a kid. A super-powered and enhanced one, yes, but still a kid.

"Barton's retiring, Bruce is gone; we need new blood, and you've got it, kid."

Hearing that Clint's retiring is a new one on her, but it provides more reasoning to his drastic and rather unexpected decision. Still, there's something else that's on her mind, and he seems to pick up on it.

"The team agrees. You're in, kid."

It's an honor, she feels, to be accepted by people as great as The Avengers, and she knows that it's a privilege that few get to experience. It's not something that she intends on taking lightly.

"Thank you, Mr Stark. I promise I won't let you down."

She feels like she should say or do more to show her appreciation, but he seems to accept it at that, and he begins to make his way for the door after nodding a goodbye. He stops at the exit, turning back to her from the doorframe, "Come out of here when you can. Thor's pacing around and I don't want him knocking over any of the furniture. It's all expensive."

He leaves after that, and Harper's just sat alone in the lab, and she's far too excited and baffled to even formulate any proper sentences. Well, except one, and it's perhaps her favourite ever.

"I'm an Avenger."

* * *

A couple of weeks go by. Her wounds heal, so do the others. Wanda copes, but she doesn't necessarily heal. Harper hasn't really tried to talk to her, mostly because she's still kinda afraid of the older girl and she knows that she wouldn't have a clue what to say to her. She's lost people too, but it's different for every person, and she doesn't know how she'd react to what she'd say.

The nightmares...well, they've sorta gotten worse. Her brain's still got all the material from before Sokovia to work with, but now there's so much more to bounce off of. It's not a nightly occurrence, but it's happened far more often than it should. Thor heard her on one of the nights that was particularly bad, and the God came bursting into the room brandishing his hammer, swearing death on any intruders. She felt bad for waking him. She'll talk to Nat about them sometimes, and if not she may mention it to Steve, but that's it.

She's on her way to the new Avengers facility with Nat, who's sat in the drivers seat beside her. The others already headed to the facility, and Harper wanted to fly or teleport there herself, but Thor was insistent on her going by car, using the excuse that she may still be injured.

It's rubbish, but Tony agreed with him regardless.

So, after finishing up a phone call with Clint, who went home soon after the battle in Sokovia to be there for his newborn son's birth, they began to head upstate, and according to the GPS they're not far out now.

"Why all of this?" She asks suddenly, glancing over at Nat, "The new facility, I mean. What's wrong with the Tower?"

She shrugs back, keeping her eyes fixed on the road, "The team's different, so there's no point in keeping everything else the same."

Harper hasn't really wanted to admit that things are different. Of course, she wasn't around for long before it all changed, but it's still noticeable to her. She'd be lying if she said that it doesn't feel odd.

"I'm still the same." Harper muses, because despite everything she doesn't feel that she's changed as much as she could've, "And so are you."

"Is that what you think?"

"Yeah. Of course." Harper replies, because she's holding onto the fact that her, Steve and Thor are still the same. Tony's not going to be sticking around for long, so those three are all she has left.

"Did you have another one last night?" Natasha suddenly asks her, and she doesn't need any specification on what she's talking about to understand her.

She's surprised that she hasn't asked her sooner, considering that the woman's been checking in on her since after the battle. She can act as stoic and cold as she wants, but that's not who Nat truly is.

"Not last night. I couldn't really sleep."

That's not a lie, but her reasoning also isn't something that she should be concerned about. That doesn't stop her from doing so, however.

"Why not?"

"I was too excited for today."

Sure, change frightens her, but she can't deny that there's an exciting aspect to it. She's going to get to explore a bunch of new buildings, and she's already been told that her room in the new facility will be even bigger than her room in the Tower.

They slip back into a comfortable silence as Natasha pulls the car into the parking area of the facility, parking it next to a convertible that's already there. The two of them walk alongside each other to the entrance of the facility, where they are met by Thor, his hammer in hand and a certain expression written upon his face that Harper can't quite identify.

He looks to Natasha first, and the two of them share an exchange that, for whatever reason, makes Harper feel on edge.

"What's going on?" She asks, eyes darting between the two adults, and Natasha's the first one who responds, surprising her by placing a hand on her shoulder and smiling softly.

"I need to go and find Fury." She tells her, and Harper nods absentmindedly as she heads inside the facility, leaving her stood with Thor on the outside, and she's gripping the straps of her backpack slightly tighter as she looks to the God cautiously, "Thor, what's going on?"

She's worried, because she's never seen Thor like this and she doesn't really know how she should be acting. She doesn't get it at first, but then she sees a certain something in him that's reminiscent of what she saw in Mr Stark the last time they had a conversation.

"You're leaving aren't you?" She asks, and she only wishes that it was rhetorical.

"Indeed I am, little person." He admits, sighing, "The Mind Stone was the fourth infinity stone to show up in the last four years. Something is afoot, and I believe I can find out what that is."

She understands why he has to go. If something's going wrong, someone has to step in to try and fix it. She just wishes that it didn't have to be him, because she really doesn't want him to go.

"I could go with you, you know? Help you." She suggests, because in her head she can compromise for him leaving by going with him.

He smiles at her, genuinely, and even he looks conflicted on the idea.

"While I do not doubt that, I think you are needed more here than anywhere else."

"I don't know about that." She replies, "I just keep screwing things up."

Sure, she's an Avenger now, and that's because she got the approval of the team. And she may have helped them in Sokovia, but that doesn't suddenly erase all the mistakes that she made. It doesn't make up for all the trouble that she caused, and the small voice in the back of her mind keeps telling her that nothing will make up for all of that.

Thor, on the other hand, is quick to shut down that thought process of hers.

"I don't believe that, and I'm certain that the others would agree." He says.

"What about Mr Stark?" She counters, and Thor actually chuckles to himself.

"Don't worry about Stark."

She appreciates his reassurance, and she knows that it's among the things that she's going to miss about him.

"Oh, before I forget. I got you something." She gasps, flinging her backpack off of her bag and rifling through it to grab her intended item. She pulls out the red box of Fruity Pebbles, passing the box over to the God, "I realise there's not much, but I couldn't really get anymore in by bag. But, you can take them back to Asgard and maybe share them with some people."

She had meant for the two of them to share it as their first breakfast in the new facility, but she's learning to adapt to the plans as they change.

Thor looks down at the box for a moment, and then he's suddenly rushing forward and lifting her into a hug, which she returns after a moment of shock.

"Thank you, Harper." He murmurs, releasing her from his grip and smiling down at her, "I'm going to miss you."

Harper nods, trying to ignore the blurriness of her vision, "I'm gonna miss you too."

He nods once more, placing his hand on her shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze before passing her to stand on the lawn just to their side. She watches as he lifts his hammer to the sky, and then a great beam of light comes down before him, engulfing him before vanishing again and taking him with it.

She finally cries once he's gone, choking on a sob that she had been holding for their entire conversation (or what felt like it). She doesn't know why she's crying, because she didn't know him nearly as long as the others did, and she didn't find herself crying when she heard about Bruce's departure despite how empty it made her feel in that moment.

Maybe it's because she had to watch him go. That's the hard part.

"Harper?"

The sound of an unfamiliar voice makes her straighten up in an instant, and she takes a moment to breath before turning to face them, finding a man stood by the door. He seems confident, but not cocky.

"I'm Sam. Sam Wilson. We haven't met yet." He says, stepping forward and hesitantly extending a hand out to her to shake.

"Hi, Sam." Harper says, laughing slightly awkwardly as she shakes his hand, "Sorry, I'm not usually like this."

Talk about a bad first impression.

"Are you okay?" He asks after she pulls her hand back, and she only feels guiltier when she notices the conflicted and awkward expression on his face.

"Yeah. I'm just not very good at goodbyes." She replies, because she know that she'll be just fine. It's just a tough pill to swallow at the moment.

"So, Sam. What's your thing?" She asks, because she decides that the best thing she can do is move the conversation along instead of dwelling on her sadness.

"My thing?"

She nods, "Yeah. I'm gonna take a wild guess and assume that you're not a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, which means that you're a part of the team."

"What makes you say that?" He asks, arms crossed and an intrigued expression coming across his face.

She can tell by how he's dressed. It's a nice dress style, but it's distinctive.

"You don't look like you're dressed for a funeral like they do all the time." She admits shrugging, and she's surprised when he actually finds her funny and laughs.

"I think we're gonna get along, kid." He says, shaking his head playfully and smiling through his laughter.

She smiles too, and though it doesn't erase the sad feelings, it's a good start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is the final chapter...of this part.
> 
> As implied by the fact that this story is a part of a series, the story doesn't end here. Stay tuned, as the next part will be starting in the next few days.
> 
> Before I move on, I want to give a huge shoutout to @starkcontrast and everyone who's been leaving reviews. You guys rock and have been making my days with your reviews! Thanks so much :)

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know what this is, but if you enjoyed it let me know and I'll keep writing.


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